Roll With It Baby

So yesterday I forgot to explain the story of the maniacal baby rolling under the bed and getting stuck.

I apologize for my shortsighted mistake. I have flogged myself duly.

There’s a bit of a back story first. I’ve taken to calling young Gertrude “Pip”. It’s a three-fold reference, really. Classical literature students will recognize this as the main character from Dickens’ “Great Expectations”. However, I picked up my reference from two less respectable sources. The first is the television show Farscape. The main character John Crichton refers to mischievous female alien Chiana as “Pip” (geek proof number one: Gary likes sci fi TV). Gertrude shares many of Chiana’s more mischievous character elements. She has little sense of fear, leaps without looking and grins when she gets caught. The secondary reference is to the Hobbit Pippin from the Lord of the Rings series. Pippin is impatient, nosy and inquisitive. His curiosity often gets his friends in trouble (see the fireworks escapade, or what he does in Moria). (Geek proof #2, Gary knows his Lord of the Rings chronology, topography and cartography.) Plus, Pippin loves food and will take yours if given the chance. Gertrude does this as well. The only difference between the two would be Pippin’s love for beer. Gertrude may share this love, but I’d be reported to family services if I indulged it. Drunken babies, no matter how funny, are illegal. Pippin was also known as “Prince of the Halflings”. Gertrude is a Halfling and a princess.

Close enough.

This weekend, I was distracting young Pip while her mother did some work in the kitchen. Normally Gertrude would “help” mommy by undoing all of the work mommy had accomplished.

So, I did my fatherly duty of playing with the baby. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it, right?

We started out by jumping on the bed. Gertrude would leap in the air and yell, “I jump!” I’d stop her from falling to her doom. It was a good set up. But she quickly tired of it. There was no element of danger if daddy saved her all the time.

So we moved on to what we call “steam rolling”. We both lie on the floor and roll into each other. This causes the baby to laugh hysterically. For some reason being rolled over, albeit gently, by a man 10 times her size, is hilarious.

Our bedroom is the perfect place for this event. It’s big, with plenty of rolling space and a nice, soft carpet to boot. The only problem is Gertrude has no directional control. Given a wide open space, she’d roll in figure eights. Unfortunately our bedroom has obstacles. Like the bed.

She promptly rolled right and straight under the bed, lodging her shoulder on the box spring frame. She laughed. And laughed and laughed.

But suddenly she realized that being stuck isn’t so funny. “I stuck! Help! I stuck!” I grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her out. She laughed the entire time.

Round two of steam rolling. I figured she’s intelligent; she’ll not do that again. Wrong. When I said GO! She went straight under the bed again. This time I think she did it on purpose.

“I stuck! (Gasping laughter) Help! I stuck!” She giggled the whole time.

Doing my duty, I extracted her again. I’m a good guy, like that. When she came out, hair all statically and flying every which way, she laughed. Hard. Like a surfer who had just wiped out on the rocks and said, “Gnarly.” “Huh huh. Huh huh. Huh huh.”

So I decided this was a bad idea. Next thing I know she’ll be falling down wells and be on the national news.

We moved to the window to watch copious wildlife cavort playfully in the yard. All we got was a squirrel. It did cavort, though. Gertrude laughed and laughed. Every thing seemed to be funny today.

“Squew! Run! Twee!” It was a short show, and I think she was disappointed by the lack of conflict.

We ran through our entire repertoire of animal voices. “What does a birdie say?” Tweet tweet. “What does a dog say?” Barf barf. “What does a monkey say?” Oooh. Oooh. “What does a humpback whale say?” Ooooooooooomooooooan click click tweeeeeeeee!

At this point I was physically exhausted. We had been jumping rolling and howling forever. She hopped off the window sill and proceeded to run around in circles until she fell down. Huh huh huh, she laughed. “Gertrude do it! Daddy do! Daddy do!” So I did.

Observation: A thirty year old gets dizzy faster than a one year old.

Time to check on mommy. Daddy’s going to have a heart attack trying to keep up with this kid.

“Mom? Are you done?”

”Done? No! It’s only been five minutes.”

Crap. She’s only one and I only last for five minutes.

Her sister is so much more reserved. What happened to this one? I’m beginning to think her mother took hallucinogens during pregnancy without telling me. Or sharing.

Could be the fact that the last movie mom saw before Gertrude’s birth was Mulholland Drive.

Or it could be that my caffeine intake somehow warped the chromosomes I contributed to this little goofball.

Still, exhausted, sweating and purple from exertion, I scooped my little girl up in my arms and hugged her tight. You get overwhelmed with love for these little creatures at the strangest time. Even in the middle of a spinning-induced aneurism.

She looked at me, smiled and kissed me on the cheek. My heart swelled with love.

Then her back stiffened and she got a relieved look on her face. “I toot”, she giggled. Sigh. That’s my girl.

Only seventeen more years until I send her to college.

Why does that seem so short all of a sudden?

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