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And Away
If it's up, it's where Alex has to be.
He's always moved up. For weeks he's been getting to the top of the coffee table himself. Alex is just shy of a yard tall; the table comes to his stomach. He puts his arms out and his palms flat on the wood, then up comes the left leg as the foot searches for purchase. Finding none because its 2-year-old owner isn't yet a Rockette, the leg thrusts forward the knee and the right foot leaves the floor. Sometimes I give him a little push in the behind or steady his left foot in place. An instant later Alex is propelled to the top of a new world to slap his hands, grunt once, and grin.
Up up up. "Up comes the baby!" was one of our first games. The first thing he learned to climb was his own rocking horse. And how long ago did I came into the kitchen and find him standing on the dishwasher door (which he'd opened) to better reach the can of Pringles?
 Typically two, he still wants to come up. "Uppa! Uppa!" I say, taking by his hands and tossing him into the air. This got big squeals for a while. Other times I swing him left and right, and other times he just likes me to take his hands and let him scale up my front like Batman on a building. Then he stands on my shoulders and looks at the top of the refrigerator for the can of Pringles. He knows more about the top of my fridge than I do.
Alex has charming movement. Jill brought him to my office once and he delighted in the long, straight, carpeted hallway. "He's fast!" my boss said.
The other night I was watching him trying a similar mounting of a dining room chair. The left foot came up and hung there, so I helped it the other inch or so and held it to the seat of the chair while he rose. Alex trilled in concentration as he stood in the seat and grasped the chair back. Then he reached up, up, and hit the light switch. Then he got down, sliding off on his stomach, the way his physical therapist taught him. I turned off the light. Then he turned around and wanted to get back up. I again held his foot. Again he stood and turned on the light. Again he slid down. I went into the kitchen, and when I returned Alex was standing in the chair and again reaching for the light switch. Click.
He learned this light switch thing last week, when I was gone on a business trip. When I left, I'd never seen him handle a light switch. "Oh yeah," said Jill, "he does that now." She says that a lot lately about Alex.
Chair, trill, stand, click, trill, click. Click, down. Away. The light is still on. Who does he think pays the light bills around here?
"I want to get him on stairs," his physical therapist said a while back, so now no stroll to the playground is complete without an ascent on the stair/slide complex. Sometimes Alex goes up the stairs sideways, left foot always up first, as if he were climbing some old table, and sometimes he crawls frontways while I hover behind and strain to not touch him. He grabs his way along the railing at the top - it seems to me Alex could shoot through the gaps in the bars of the railing (he's fast) but he just works his way hand over hand to the top of the slide.
 Here I scoop him up. "Let's go down, Alex!" I say, and I put him on my lap and wiggle onto the shiny metal. I forget to lift my sneakers, though, and we go down herky-jerky. Daddy's slide over, Alex then usually shoots back to the stairs. Lately, however, he's darted for the concrete steps leading to the playground gate and the busy intersection. "You're taking my hand if you're going near the street, pal," I say, grasping his fingers. Alex almost always yanks his hand away, but I take it again and eventually he lets me. Yet as we walk away I can feel his glance return to the gate, and I can feel the little pull down there as he wants, wants, wants to get back close to the big fast cars.
"Once more on the slide, Alex?"
Today Jill calls to say he's climbing the outside of the shower door. "He's Spiderbaby!" she says. At home tonight I will look one minute and he'll be on grinning on the coffee table. Then I'll look again and he'll be on the floor and headed my way. When did he get down? Who helped him? Who does he think pays the bills around here?
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