This is just the beginning, of course. Augie will spend the next few years exploring the capabilities of his body, learning about how his body moves and how it interacts with different objects, discovering again and again where his body ends and the rest of the world begins. Our job as parents is to foster this growth and exploration and help him to become competent and confident in his body and its movements. As I see it, our job isn't quite to prevent him from ever hurting himself - even if we wanted to, that would be impossible; our job is to give him safe but big boundaries, to make sure he doesn't hurt himself badly, and to kiss all the scrapes, bumps and bonks as he goes.
I'd really rather that he not pull the kitchen chairs onto his forehead, but these little bumps and bruises are the signs of a little boy exploring the world and his body. They reflect his curiosity and his strength, the little boy emerging from the baby.
A secondary consequence of this mobility (and strength) is that he can no longer play in the other room while we eat breakfast in the kitchen (or do anything anywhere else). A few days ago we could leave him in a room and know that he'd move around to get to different toys, but wouldn't really get in any trouble; now we can be fairly certain that the first thing he's going to do is try to pull something on his head or go bashing headfirst into a mirror or something. A new era in our parenting has begun.
But you didn't come here for all that, did you? You came to see Augie discover himself in the mirror (email subscribers, click here):
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