I have had the spe­cial priv­i­lege this week­end to be the recip­i­ent of our grand­sons new desire for unlim­ited “lap time”. It is beyond cute watch­ing him pick up a toy, a book, or a new play thing and back up expect­ing to sit down on your lap and you had bet­ter be ready because he doesn’t turn around to look. Many a time I was strug­gling to sit cross legged fast enough to beat his short legged drop down. Some­times I wasn’t, and his lit­tle rump hit the floor which con­fused and upset him, so I learned to be quicker then him. I don’t mean once or twice, I mean EVERY time!! Besides just being the sweet­est thing, it had me pon­der­ing this par­tic­u­lar desire at this point in his very young life. What I’ve come up with is prob­a­bly not what all the baby gurus would sur­mise, but here’s what I am think­ing.……
15 months old has to be hard. You’ve learned to walk, but new shoes and car­pet can bring you back to your knees, and you ‘d love to run but can’t quite put it together, and the finer points of climb­ing still elude you but not for lack of try­ing. When you are tired the old equi­lib­rium goes right out the door which is con­fus­ing as hell to you so…“why am I falling over all the time?” must run thru his lit­tle head. Add to that,  you are try­ing out a new lan­guage that YOU  know but has your par­ents mak­ing the odd­est faces as they run thru a gamut of what “aaaryane” could pos­si­bly mean, and though they mimic every word they think you know, you react in frus­tra­tion because they just don’t get it! Your tastes are chang­ing by the minute too,  and one day you love a food and the next it taste like dirt, not to men­tion these sharp lit­tle objects now erupt­ing in your mouth that hurt like heck and make chew­ing awful. You dis­cover that sweets are a very good thing and are con­fused why mom and dad dole them out so rarely and what is up with this rule thing any­way?? I have to sit in my chair? Be nice to the cats? Share my toys??? Could life get any harder????
I don’t really know, but need­ing a lap just seems to cure many of the newest things life is throw­ing this lit­tle guys way right now, and I for one, intend to have one avail­able any time he needs it. If every time I am with him now he needs my lap, it will be there. Laun­dry, kitchen clean up, toys being put away can all wait. Because I know one day soon I will show up there, and my lap will be the last thing he wants as he will have moved on to the next won­der­ful phase of his life. And I will miss the com­pact­ness of his ever chang­ing lit­tle body, the smell that is uniquely lively lit­tle boys, the sight of his small hands explor­ing and fig­ur­ing out yet another gad­get he has come to love, the soft­ness of his blond hair, the turn­ing of his head to look at me with ques­tions in his eyes and the warmth of not only him, but the warmth of his trust that in a lap, whether it be moms or dads or mine, the world is right for that  minus­cule sec­ond of time. Kud­dos to the par­ents who have brought him this far, and who have given him a world so okay that he knows that a lap is the very best med­i­cine for a 15 month old whose life is chang­ing so fast that it is just plain scary for him right now. Happy, happy lap time lit­tle bug!!!