Lots of Sliding
Zane is a contrarian of sorts. If we mention on the blog that he’s not drinking milk, he starts drinking milk; waking up in the middle of the night, he starts long haul snoozes; doesn’t really use his slide, he starts sliding and sliding and sliding. Of course now that we’ve blogged it he’ll become a non-contrarian, a chance I’m willing to take.
Yesterday was Faith’s day off so Zane and I went for a huge walk (it will be even better when Zane is moving his legs on these outings) culminating in a visit to the playground. They have a normal slide and a curly-Q slide, both of which he loves. Oddly they also have a steering wheel mounted to a panel at around Zane standing height and he spent lots of time spinning and spinning it.
Last night while he worked on getting worn out for bed he kept going up and down the slide. He’d climb to the top, turn his body around to be feet first, cast a huge grin over his shoulder and slide down. At the bottom of the slide, and often the whole way down, he’d shine his super-smiley face over at me so I could clap and marvel at his sliding skills, which spurred him on for another run.
I think we’ve mentioned his turning-around technique. Ever since we first started putting him on beds and couches he would turn his body around so feet were headed towards the edge. And then steadily wiggle or crawl his way backwards to go “down.” This meant he was pretty much a natural when it came time to navigate stairs.
The results are sometimes funny and sometimes scary. At Mom’s cabin he kept backing his way to the edge of her deck, except the drop-off is over four feet. He didn’t pay heed to our not-so-subtle hints that he shouldn’t even try: legs hanging in mid-air he’d start squawking as if we were keeping the ground away from him on purpose.
The funny one is with the stairs in our house. Zane has a good memory, if you walk him by the stairs to another part of the living room he’ll remember seeing the stairs un-blocked and immediately start heading there. The problem is that he turns his body around so his feet are “pointing” towards the stairs and starts wiggling backwards in search of the precipice—despite the eight or ten feet and a bunch of furniture between him and the stairs. He may get a leg hooked on a couch or bonk into the knee wall, but eventually he’ll make it … or we’ll put up the gate.
