Baby Antics

The kids and I had Friday off of school. I slept in all the way to seven in the morning which felt great and was up and dressed while the house was quiet with sleeping people. I slipped over to our prayer corner for prayers and was most of the way through my psalms for the day when I heard my grandson’s sweet babbling.
I snuck upstairs to the guest room that Esther, John Ben, and Misha share, knocked quietly, and snuck over to the crib where Misha stood looking over at me. He smiled so sweetly with his two-tooth grin and wild baby hair. We walked down the hallway, kissed the icon of the Theotokos, and went downstairs. After I removed his sleep sack and changed his diaper, I dropped him off in the baby barricade and went to the kitchen to make a bottle. He was so excited to get his morning snack. He grabbed the nipple, threw himself down on the floor, and drank half of it right away.
I sang our Les Misérables song, Red and Black before jumping across the barricade. I’ve been obsessed with Les Mis ever since I went to see it with Esther, Coryn, and Diane. John Ben didn’t go but even he has gotten into the sprit by adding on his own lyrics.
I sing, “Red the blook of angry men. Black the dark of ages past”
John Ben sings that too but has added, “White the color of his milk. Blue the color of his shorts!”
The fireplace wall is one side, and three sofas and loveseats make up most of the other three sides of our baby jail with dining room chairs, boxes, and blankets blocking the openings that we once walked through. Misha prowls the corners since every so often a sofa or a chair is out of place and he can crawl free. He loves to cruise the huge square ottoman in the middle of the space and carries first one baby toy and then another from one end to the other. There is so much to do, but he is happiest when one of us sits on a sofa and keeps him company. I brought my Bible with me and finished my reading.
We spent a couple of hours together. Over and over again Misha played for a bit and then came up to me for hugs and kisses. Close to ten, I took him to the kitchen and put him in his highchair. He watched me empty the dishwasher and mix up his breakfast. Half a cup of hot water, two scoops of formula, enough baby cereal to be the consistency of baby food, and half a packet of fruity baby food. He loved it and ate every baby spoonful. Then I wiped his face with a soft blue cloth, which he didn’t like so much. It was time for his nap, so I woke up his parents and asked John Ben to carry him upstairs again. I’m usually home from work in time to give Misha his cereal. His breakfast is my favorite time of day.
After his long midday nap, Misha was up for a change of pace. He has learned to use his walker and loves the freedom it gives him. We baby-proof as we go and will have to level it up once he’s walking everywhere without the one-foot radius keeping him out of trouble. As it is, when he was learning to use the walker, he managed to fill his seat with a pile of bills and envelopes sitting on the edge of the dining room table, almost knocked over the coat rack, and reached into the recycling bin. The last time Esther and John Ben let him crawl free in the great room, he raced to the back of the sofa and pulled out an old gobstopper which they immediately grabbed from him. He definitely can’t be left unattended, but it’s a joy to watch him to see what he’ll do next.
We’ve had a couple of warm days in which I took Misha to the local park. He loved the baby swing and the playground steps. I can’t wait to see him running through our yard which is beautiful with all our flowering fruit trees these days.
Because I have seen him crawling up and down the play structure at the park, I wasn’t surprised at the trouble he got in when he escaped the barricade the other day. With ten people in the house and the barricade in the great room, Misha almost always has people with him. Last Thursday when I was at Pilates and Coryn was at the doctor’s, John Ben and Esther stepped outside for a minute to discuss Esther’s speech for an upcoming talk at Notre Dame in the warm afternoon sun. Jonah was with the baby and then Xenia and Justin took turns. When all the attention of the auntie and uncles was drawn by other adventures, Misha tried the four corners of the barricade once again and found a weakness, a tiny space big enough for an eleven-month-old baby to squeeze through. He crawled into great-grandma Coryn’s room and left a pacifier behind. When his parents came in the house, they saw the barricade empty, searched the house, and discovered Misha on the way to his own bedroom.
John Ben, Esther, and Misha are off to Texas where Esther will fly out for a couple of conferences. They will be gone for two very long weeks. I’ll miss them but it will be nice to have the sitting room reclaimed for a minute and I’ll use the time to baby-proof more so that Misha can have a bigger world to be set loose in.
I love having a baby in the house, but I’m glad I’m not the one on night duty. It’s more fun being the Nana.
John Ben got accepted to a fully funded PhD program in systematic theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Esther has been hired by the classics department there to lead Great Books seminars as an adjunct professor. Esther still hopes to do a PhD program at some point, but I’m hoping she’ll have another baby before she starts her coursework in a couple of semesters. A friendly family in Steubenville has offered them a place to live where the walls aren’t painted with lead and the water isn’t poisonous, which makes me much more comfortable with their move back next August.