The one thing you can always say when people ask you what it's like parenting a mobile baby: "I have to be a lot tidier." Kind of sounds like an oxymoron to those not in the club, and at first glance I concur. Blake not only creates disorder everywhere he goes, I half believe that he is disorder personified. Two magnets of the same charge will repel; likewise Blake and order. He flings things around, order vanishes over the horizon, the universe regains balance.

But with a mobile baby, you have to clean up the toys and books, lest you kill yourself creeping into his room after bedtime. With a mobile baby, you have to be careful what you place on the edges of coffee tables, for it will be snatched off and plunged into some part of the baby's head. With a mobile baby, you have to move your stereo off the floor and promptly reshelve the expensive books you probably shouldn't have bought in the first place.

All of which is a lead-in to this: my desk is a huge indulgent mess. It's proper function is a dining room table, and when I moved my computer in I was astounded by all the space left around the hardware. Then I filled those spaces with crap. I can get away with it even now because it is three feet high and out of Blake's wandering reach, but that's gonna change sooner than I'd like. We already had an ugly incident last month when he pulled on a hanging strap and caused the digital camera to rebound off his face (tears! horror! a persistent red welt on his nose that made me feel guilty every time I looked at it!)

To this end, I've been cleaning up a little at a time. It's kind of like when I used to teach, and I would create huge drifts of teacher clothes on the bedroom floor. Cleaning up the whole thing at one go was exhausting, so I made a Flylady-inspired deal with myself: every night after school, I had to hang up the outfit I had worn that day and three other items. In a few days I had a floor again. I'm hoping that I can spend five minutes each afternoon and rediscover my desk, because I've buried a lot of important papers in this heap of garbage. Today I mailed off forms to my health insurance company and the taxman, both of which were on the verge of being overdue. Thank heaven my secret selective anal-retentiveness kicked in when it did!

I got invited to this year's convocation at Hogsboro High. I'm rather excited about it: this year's graduating class contains the wonderful class with whom I fell in love (pregnancy hormones had nothing to do with it!) This year's class also holds my first homeroom as a professional teacher, the specific group of students that made me understand I had descended to hell on earth.

And yet I'm still looking forward to it all! Because I'll never have to do that year again! Just that thought is cheerful enough to keep me warm all winter.

Today's helping of Blake minutia:

Blake has finally mastered the delicate art of backing down the stairs. Until this week he would climb up all the stairs in the house, up and up and up, but never show the slightest interest in descending again. (He's also become somewhat obsessed with the fridge recently, and one of the best ways to keep him out of the crisper is to put him on the landing three steps below the kitchen. In the time it takes him to climb up to me I can get what I need from the fridge & seal up the tempting arctic icebox without worrying that he could go anywhere but toward myself.) He figured it all out on the single step surrounding the sunken livingroom (yes, we have a very 70's house!) and he's ready to take on every step that comes his way.

He continues to answer to the name 'Murray.' We don't know why this is so.

He has learned how to climb into the car seat, so when we're getting into the car I can just put him next to his seat and he'll climb in on his own. Of course, what he really wants to do is stand facing forward and jump up and down, but I'm still impressed that he can get in by himself. Can't buckle himself in, though. I'm kind of glad; it'd be too much like the self-slaughtering cow in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 10/26/2004 07:59:00 p.m.