Life With a Crawling Daughter

Dear Solitary Reader:

Well I hit 35 over the weekend and it failed to bring about the miracle of maturity that my wife was hoping for: sorry dear, maybe next year (but don’t hold your breath).

And because I’m older and wiser, here’s some numerology billshit: 3 is a prime number, 5 is a prime number and 35 is a prime number – therefore I am currently in my prime. Next year however it will be a different story as I will be divisi-Bill by 1,2,3,4,6,9,12, 18 and 36.  Ghastly. I know. 37 however should see a return to my prime.

In other, more important, news yesterday I watched my daughter crawl from the living room into the kitchen on hands and knees. For the last couple of months she’s been utilizing the army crawl and has perfected the art of falling backwards from standing to end up in the ideal belly crawl position. It’s like watching a G.I. Joe figure come to life.

All that has changed as now she has discovered the  increased mobility that comes with crawling on hands and knees, and as Ben Parker said: “With great mobility comes great responsibility – for the parent.” At least I think he said something like that.

When the boy started crawling I don’t remember the fear setting in; but my son, like his father, was a lazy kid. Oh sure, he could crawl, he just didn’t see any point in it. My daughter however has all the curiosity of a Mythbuster, but none of the responsibility to the insurance companies to keep her from exploring everything she shouldn’t be sticking her fingers in or putting in her mouth.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m happy for Daughter. Her world is opening up; blossoming into a realm of possibility where every room might hold something new and around every corner is an opportunity waiting to be explored. It’s just as a parent my wife or I now have to follow her around to make sure there isn’t a petrified Willow (cat) around the corner waiting to lash out or to make sure we didn’t leave a pair of scissors on the table (which would explain why the cat was petrified… and bald).

I propose a mathematical hypothesis: The relationship between a parent’s ability to get something done is inversely proportionate to a child’s mobility. That is to say – the more the kid can shimmy, the less time the parent has to get anything done because he or she is chasing after little Jr. who’s chasing the cat with the hedge trimmer.

The formula would look something like this:

Free Time = (Speed of Parent)(hrs of sleep)/# of children)
                                (speed of child)(proximity to nap)

I foresee this being fairly useful for day planning.

*Warning: formula has not been perfected yet. Any accidental holes in the space time continuum are entirely the fault of the user.