Skills Overload

I'm not shy about admitting that I have a least favorite stage of early childhood.

It runs from approximately eight to eighteen months. It is the stage of constant motion and no sense; tantrums and whining; and BIG messes. It requires constant supervision. It is an exhausting time of life (and not just for the child).

I thought Clark was going to give me a few months of leeway. For weeks he has had little interest in moving (believe me, there's plenty of entertainment around these parts without moving a single inch). In fact, he was perfectly content to just sit on the floor surrounded by a half dozen toys (and since the other three boys all learned to crawl before they could sit up, it was a stage I was fully relishing).

 

And then . . . Clark learned to do practically everything in the span of a single week.

I'm still reeling.

Last week, Clark learned how to:

• go from lying down to sitting up all by himself
• roll over with the rapidity of a steamroller
• spin around in circles
• chow down on finger foods
• pivot from sitting to hands/feet and back to sitting
• pull himself to standing
• perfect the downward dog position
• scoot forward and backward
• cough-cry and blink his eyes whenever he's upset
• only be satisfied with cords, paper, and iPhones as play toys
• crawl on hands and knees

None of my other boys ever learned so much so fast. In true fourth-child fashion, Clark caught us all off guard and pulled a fast one ("You think you know everything about babies? Well, watch this!"). Seriously, when he started crawling on Saturday (like, the real hands-and-knees deal), all I could do was gape. We thought we still had weeks, if not months, before we had to worry about the troubles that come with a baby in motion, so we have literally been scrambling to baby-proof the house.

Oh, and did I mention that Clark decided to learn all these things on little to no sleep? He went from napping 4-6 hours during the day to a whopping hour (or less).

When I put him in his crib, it's as if he doesn't know what to do with all his new-found energy and skills. He sit up; he lays down; he stands up; he falls down; he rolls around; and he cries and complains the entire time. One afternoon last week, I peeked in on him after he finally quieted down and found this:

 

Unfortunately I didn't feel like I could leave him in that position, so I laid him back down, and he woke up (of course).  

So say hello to the new Clark. I think he just lost his status as favorite child.