If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain…

…you move the damned mountain…

Awwww. Lookit the baby! I mean, really. Just look at that little fella. Isn’t he cute, crawling off on some little baby adventure? You wouldn’t think something so small could be capable of mass destruction. (All that debris in the hallway? All his. Every crumb.)

And today was a Big Day in Baby Tyler’s life at Mary’s. Today, baby Tyler learned to climb onto the dining table benches!!! (Can you hear the excitement in my voice? Because it sure was exciting, oh gracious me, yes!)

Baby Noah, three months older and walking, has not once even contemplated this feat. Baby Noah can climb onto the couch, mind you, but he scrambles cautiously (and competantly) up and down on his tummy. No real danger there.

Tyler? No soft, cushy couch for this boy! He yearns for more challenging terrain. The dining table is good: wooden table, wooden benches, wooden floor beneath. No sensible belly-scrambling for him, either. Once he’s breached the bench, he kneels up there, bouncing his triumph.

So, the dining furniture. Not only is the terrain suitably hard and bruise-inducing, with the bouncing ritual providing the right level of death-defiance, the table is also the motherload of non-baby-friendliness: a bowl of polished rocks, just the right size to fill a breathing passage; a small pile of pom-poms; a camera; a box of beads; a cup of hot tea; and, oh glory be, a butter knife!

A butter knife just right for bashing into the table, ‘bam! bam! bam!’, such a lovely noise, the end of the knife (round and non-serrated, thank heavens), waving about in the air next to his ear. (And to think I honestly thought I couldn’t fly.)

My dining set now looks like this:

(Table at top. The wooden plank facing you at the bottom is the bench, on its side.)

And it will stay that way until he’s overcome his will to self-destruct. Or develops some common sense.

Which could be a while…