Oh, Charlie

At 11am this morning, we dropped Oliver off at the airport for the time of his life, a trip to Cincinnati alongside my parents to visit my sister and brother-in-law.  We got back in the car and realized that for a few days, we were back to being parents of one.  Michael turned to Charlie in the backseat and said, "well Charlie, now you'll find out what it was like to be Oliver."  We headed to Centennial Lakes and took Charlie on his first paddleboat ride, helped him feed the ducks, and doted on him with 100% of our attention.  We worked together to do a diaper change, like we were new parents again. 

It's not as if Charlie has been casted off in the shadows.  This child is passionately dedicated to making sure he is fully engaged.  He is in the 90th percentile on all growth charts, which is so appropriate for a kid who does everything to the fullest.  Charlie is into everything.  Oh, I know, 18-month-olds are always into everything, but this kid is crazy.  He is constantly climbing.  Standing on the dining room table.  Dragging chairs to countertops to get up to higher levels.  Pushing buttons on expensive equipment and on his parents.  The other day he put a DVD into the VHS player. He climbs on the top of the couches to climb up the stairs- on the outside of the railing. He falls several times a day.  Everyone nervously watches his antics as we sit back and shrug and say, "there's nothing you can do.  He's Charlie."  The other day we were having a picnic on a steep hill at Como when his stroller fell on top of him.  Nearby mothers looked over in panic as we nonchalantly pulled Charlie out from under and explained that he does that all the time.  He has fallen down the stairs.  Twice.  He has eaten cat poop. He escaped out of his stroller without me noticing- as I was holding onto it.  He pooped on our rug.  Tonight I cleaned macaroni and cheese off of the carpet and living room couch- and he was eating in the dining room.  This was right before he took a watering can and watered the carpet, which was right before getting onto the kitchen island to grab my fancy-pants camera and, smiling, swing it back and forth precariously above the wood floor. He massages any food that can mush into his hair at every meal.  After he's done eating, he climbs on everyone else's chair to eat what they left on their plate.  Outside is no better; he eats dirt. He sits in mud puddles.  He has walked off our lawn, down the steep hill drop off and fallen into the field of prairie grasses.  He picked the decorative pebbles from a handcrafted garden stone and tried to eat them.   Michael took him to the park where Charlie then scaled a seven- foot climbing wall.  He scribbled on our walls and then ate the crayons.  If it's computer-related, he's banging it.  If it's programmable, he will destroy it.  I was removing him from the fridge as he was dispensing water onto the floor only to turn around and find him sticking a plastic toy tweezers from a doctor's kit into an outlet.  About a third of the time, he does not go to bed peacefully, and yells and screams and screeches, sometimes for hours on end.  One to two hours is not uncommon, his record is two and a half hours.  When Charlie screams himself to sleep, Oliver looks up from the books we are reading, shakes his head, and sighs, "Oh, Charlie.  He's soooo crazy."  I could feel Charlie fluttering around when I was a mere 11 weeks pregnant with him, and countless sonographers warned us we would be peeling this child off the ceiling.  It is almost literally true. 

"Charlie is an adjective," my sister-in-law said tonight.  "We're not just talking about a kid.  It's...Charlie.  You can't childproof.  You have to Charlie-proof."  She's quite right, if only there was a way to do it.  We make the environment as safe as we can, keep our eyes wide open, and let him discover his world, sometimes head-first. 

But what makes Charlie so 90th percentile is that he is that much adorable, that much sweet, that much intuitive, and oh, so very, very funny.  We're so eager to see how his boldness translates into his interests and personality as he grows.  But for right now, we have all of Charlie, all to ourselves. Love you, little bug.