Mountain Goat

OK, we have a problem. My son started crawling, then started walking, then started walking a lot, then started to use pillows to get onto the furniture. Now he is constantly climbing onto the furniture without pillows. Like, constantly. My wife and I just sat around the ottoman for literally 20 minutes as he climbed on, was pulled off, climbed on, pulled off, on, off, on, off, rinse, repeat.

While we are incredibly happy to see his mobility progressing, his ability to get on the furniture is much more advanced than his ability to get off the furniture. In fact, his preferred method of getting off the furniture (besides just not getting off at all) is a straight head-first dive bomb. He hasn’t landed one yet—we’ve always been there to grab him first. But I am constantly in awe of his general disregard for personal safety. I’m hoping that gets better as he gets older, but…

He’s at the point now where if you stop him from getting onto the furniture, he becomes, in a word, indignant. Whiny. Sassy. Grumpy. Tries to trick you by turning around like he’s going back to his toys but then doubles back and tries to get back onto the furniture. When he’s on the furniture, he looks so damn proud, like he won a prize or just finished off his first frozen pizza by himself (which is a prize on its own).

Our current containment unit is not working for our little mountain goat, so we will need to make some adjustments. He has a fully-fenced in area with the couch and chair as barriers that keep him away from the stairs and animals. It’s worked great up until now because he’s been in an enclosed space that is safe and full of toys. But now, he’s testing the defenses. The raptor handlers faced similar issues in Jurassic Park when the raptors were testing the fences for weaknesses, though if Rory gets onto the furniture he doesn’t chew our arm off. He does bite my wife a lot but I don’t seem to be the right flavor.

We are in the process of adjusting our containment unit so maybe we can go to the kitchen for 15 seconds to get a delicious Suzy Q while he’s in the other room without fear of him ending up on top of a chair. As of right now, he would literally get onto the couch and dive bomb off in those 15 seconds.

Each new step in his development is fun to see but also creates new puzzles and problems for us as parents. We try to cherish these moments (honest) because we know we will miss him at this age, but we are also very excited about Rory and his soon-to-be born sister Lucy to be around 4 and 5 where I don’t have to worry about them falling off everything. Wait, I still have to worry about that? Well crap.