Adventures with Chairs

Mary is decidedly a different temperament than John. With my firstborn, I did not understand these babies discussed in textbooks and baby manuals. "When you want to cook dinner, just set up your baby with a cupboard full of Tupperware and he will play happily by himself!" Not with John! No way, no how. But Mary is that textbook baby so far. Last night during dinner she played happily by herself in the kitchen for almost 30 minutes. Something that kept her occupied for a long time was chasing the above water bottle across the table. She'd laboriously cruise around the other side of the table, try to grab the bottle, and it would shoot across the table to the other side, just out of her reach. So she'd cruise around to the other side, bat at it, and it would shoot away again. It was quite humorous to watch and Mary was cheerful all the while instead of melting into angry tears. Also, Mary is already trying to figure out how to climb up on the table and sit in the chairs, like Big Brother, but she's not there yet.

Speaking of those little red chairs, this morning John got stuck somewhere for the first time. Really stuck, not just where he thought he was stuck. I was washing dishes while John ate breakfast at his little table. He commented to me cheerfully, "This is where my knees go!" I didn't pay much attention till he said he was stuck. He had turned around backwards and put both legs through the holes in the red chair. I figured he just needed me to pull him out, but when I tried, he really was stuck. I played it cool, but I was starting to worry. I told John that I wanted to ask Daddy a question and told him to eat his bagel while I stepped away for a moment. Turns out Daddy was on an important conference call and couldn't step away, so I didn't even tell him the problem lest he worry.

I went back to John, who was becoming hysterical. I pretended to be light and calm throughout, but I was already wondering what kind of cutting device could cut through the plastic of that chair. I kept telling myself silently, "If he could fit his legs through, we can fit his legs out!"

I got out vegetable oil and laughed and told John how silly it was going to be that we were going to pour oil on his legs to make them slippery. By now John was screaming. It was really hard for me to pretend to be calm while telling him to relax his legs (yeah, right) and try the different angles to make his knee bones as small as possible. After several minutes, we freed one leg and that gave both of us hope that we could free the second leg, which we did. John was still shrieking and weeping as we made our way to the bathroom to wash off the oil. But when he saw the water beading on his legs and I was fake-laughing about how silly all of this was, then he cheered up and started laughing.

Phew! Now we can check off "getting stuck for the first time" from our list. Many more to come, I'm sure.