One Small Step for Benji

The excitement never ends around this place. First, we found ourselves a baby. Then that baby started doing all sorts of fun stuff, like laughing and crawling. And now, much to my disbelief, Benjamin has decided to walk! Last week, after an entire month of "cruising" along the furniture and hanging on our pants legs, Benjamin stepped away from the table and took seven steps into the wide open. He fell to his bum, looked at me and started clapping for himself. Then he got up and did it again. And before I knew it, he was getting across the entire room and down the hall and to the stairs. He is still a little wobbly, at best, but each day becoming a little more confident and a little more stable. How exciting!

Today, Benji and I were in the bookstore and he struggled out of my arms to reach for some stuffed animals that were on the shelf. I put him down and he stood at the shelf and gently picked up the animals and placed them back in their spot. He then turned around and walked over to the shelf behind us, where he turned a few pages in a board book. He walked ever so slowly from there to the train display table, where he picked up train cars and pushed them on the track. After a minute of that, it was back to the original animal shelf, where he reached up for me to pick him back up, as if to say "Ok, Mom. I'm ready to see something else." I blinked and Benjamin became a person with reasoning skills. It was so civilized! A few minutes later I put him down again, confident that he would be able to handle all of the visual stimuli without too much of an issue. I was very wrong. He took off for the greeting cards and frantically started grabbing at the envelopes and tossing them behind his back. Not one card, handfuls of cards and envelopes. I started to say "Benji, that's a stop. Benji, that's a stop", which is my new-age parenting way of saying "NO". He completely ignored me and started crumpling the paper and putting it into his mouth with one hand and tossing with the other. I dropped my purse and started picking up the cards that littered the aisle. He then walked over to my purse, dumped it of its contents and started pulling Cheerios out of their bag and dropping them on the floor, too. I finally grabbed his grubby little paws and through clenched teeth growled "STOP IT". A fellow shopper surely overheard me and was surely disappointed by my tone. I was pretty disappointed by my tone, too, but enough is enough. How much was I supposed to take? Just a minute ago, he was fine, playing nicely with everything. We turned the corner and he transformed into this destruction machine, hell-bent on touching everything in sight. I wanted to make an announcement to everyone who was watching me pick up my purse and flatten out cards and repair the shelf display - I didn't do it....Benji did it. And while I might have growled this once, I am only just getting accustomed to dealing with a toddler on the go and that if any of them had a better suggestion they can forget it because I'm really not in the mood for their condescending tone. To be honest, I was really mortified because in 15 seconds flat, I lost total control. Benjamin was literally "on the loose" in that section of the bookstore. He may be short, but he's pretty quick.

Benji has only been walking for a week and I'm already worn out. We spend countless hours walking around the house, Benji upright and smiling, me hunched over and wincing with lower back pain as I keep my hands ready to catch him when he topples over. I don't know when I'll take him back out in public again. We may need to have a little talk about all of the new responsibilities that come along with walking around in a store. He's pretty mature - I think he'll understand. When Ben started walking I was reminded of that famous saying about a small step for man, blah blah blah.... but is there really such a thing as a small step for man? Isn't every step progress of some sort? Doesn't every little step that Ben takes mean that he is becoming a little stronger, a little smarter, a little more independent? If I can just remember that when I'm trying to keep Benji and the world around him safe while he is busy stepping, maybe I won't be so prone to growl at him when he tears up the joint. He is making progress the only way he knows how - one step at a time. What happens to us all when he learns to run?