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Baby proof
On Saturday, LOML and I spent a bit of time looking for baby gates. Do you believe it, baby gates! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the kind of person who likes to create barriers to keep wee-people out, but a free-range baby is heading our way and due to land in Picton this week. We haven’t been in the baby-proofing business for many, many years. With the exception of Alfred the Early, all of our grandchildren are fairly grown-up and well-versed on the rules of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house. It’s been many, many years since we’ve jumped to save a precious piece of Coalport china from sticky-baby hands. It’s been as many years since we wondered if the dials on the stereo are as interesting to the newest addition to the family as they were to the older ones. Truthfully, our youngest child was the most notorious for cheekily rearranging things on the coffee table, upping the volume on the receiver and shredding magazines as if she were being paid by the page. She, her partner and Alfred the Early are moving to Ontario. They’ve been “posted”. Yep, we’ll be actively grandparenting a fairly new, free-range, baby-baby. We’re not too sure we can remember all of the rules of baby wrangling. We are pretty sure all of those rules have changed since our last infant-in-our-house encounter.
So, now we have two baby gates, one for the stairway and one for the laundry room. That’s two more than we had when our children were infants. It’s two more than we had for the other grandchildren, but youngest child said, “Alfred doesn’t respect boundaries.” In the old days of child rearing at our house, we didn’t fence them in, so to speak. Nope, we used good old-fashioned playpens. Go ahead, tell me there isn’t a difference. A fence is a fence, you say. Well, we didn’t see it that way, at all. Whenever junior needed to be someplace safe, LOML and I thought nothing of plopping the kid into the concentration pen. What the heck did we know? Everything we knew about babies we learned from our playpen parents and Dr. Spock. We spoon fed our babies mushed up guck out of jars, and all meals were doled out by the clock. Six, ten, two, six, ten, two. I never owned a wristwatch until we had children. Dr. Spock told me, six, ten, two and repeat. And so it was. Dr. Spock and my mom swore by routines. We did things a certain way because that was the way they had done it. And then? Well, and then our children started having children of their own. Goodbye to schedules. Goodbye to concentration pens. Goodbye to mushy, tasteless baby food from a jar. Goodbye to partially hydrolyzed protein mixed with sterile water. Hello to breastfeeding for longer than six weeks. Hello to letting the baby make a psychedelic mess at mealtime, a.k.a “baby led weaning”. Hello to what LOML and I call free-range babies.
When we thought we couldn’t possibly learn any more “new tricks” we’ve come face-to-face with the Bumbo; the noisy, musical, battery-operated play gym; a diaper bag/changing station backpack thingy; a carseat that doubles as a stroller seat and defies all attempts by LOML and I to install or un-install under any circumstances in a car or upon a stroller. We’ve become acquainted with weighted blankies, soothers that look like something from outer space, white noise machines and waterless baby wash. And then there’s the diapering thingies— systems, whatever. No flushables for this boy. Today, we’re a bit worried about bringing the family heirloom out of the attic, perhaps a Vilas rock maple highchair is passé. We’re about to find out.
“Thoughts and prayers.”
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