sign posts

Our little bundle of joy and bliss has figured out the last piece of the puzzle that is crawling. Rather than just walking his legs towards his hands until he falls over, he now moves his arms to match and there he goes, directly to the plugs and wire flexes and the DVD player with his little fingers grabbing and those two bottom teeth set to 'chew'.

This has had the same effect on us that every stage in Charlie's life has had since the day I peed on the stick, to whit, none at all. Our capacity to live in a state of denial is monumental and although we have had crawling for nearly a week, we have yet to discuss how we are going to child-proof our house which is full of pointy corners and electrical cables and glass and, you know, books and CDs and pots and pans all currently stored on shelves near the floor.

This is all great news for bundle boy who goes in circles trying to decide whether the DVD player, the CDs or the saucepans are his next target and when he can't decide, it's a quick sojourn to Sammy's bowl where if he's not stopped, he will proceed to decorate the floor, (which, agreed, is a bit muted), his clothing and very possibly his intestinal flora, with cat food.

To this end we are experimenting with the words 'no', 'non' and the accompanying baby-sign. Currently, just the tone of voice and the gesture are enough to make him stop what he's doing and melt into tears which makes me feel wretched. OK, great, I can stop him from doing something disgusting or dangerous (or both, like stretching his privates until they are three times as long as they should be), but I hate to think that I am undermining his sense that I love him unconditionally for everything that he does. We don't even have to raise our voices or sound moderately firm to get this effect, the sign is enough on it's own. The thing is, I don't think he actually knows what we mean, he just understands that we're somehow not 110% behind him any more and that is clearly a shock. So, to mute the effect of the big 'no' tears, I then swoop him up and make a big fuss of him which means that in about 3 days from now I am going to have a baby who will equate doing something wrong with getting a cuddle and you can tell where that will go.

The cat, on the other hand, is quite well behaved and probably does understand the word 'no' but since he is profoundly deaf, he can't hear it. This is handy for him as he has complete immunity from any sort of rules and regulations given that he can't hear them enacted. Being a deaf cat, apparently, means that you are free to walk anywhere you want because you didn't hear that person's face sleeping on that pillow. I am therefore trying to train the cat to understand the same baby sign language that we are trying to teach the blob because I think it's important that kitty learns the words for 'no', 'eat' and 'ducky'.

All this advancement in the state of our communication skills is effectively just another way to avoid baby-proofing the apartment because we clearly won't have to move those glass candle-sticks if Charlie understands they are a 'no' and so long as he knows to stay away from the cookware, we don't have to worry about him pulling the Pyrex dishes down on his head.

Actually, of course, we don't let him in the kitchen unattended however given the teensy tiny open plan nature of our bijou apartment, it's bound to happen one day and by that point we will either have had to enclose our kitchen unit or said 'no' and meant it a whole bunch of times.

Does anyone know the sign language for 'will power' and 'action'? I think I'm going to need them.