Xander, Kai, and their Parents: Walking, Climbing, Getting into Trouble

This past week, Kai officially passed into toddlerhood. He's walking around with a stiff-legged, drunken sailor gait, keeping us in suspense with each step. Will he fall? Will he drop to his knees? No, he manages to stay up for ten, fifteen, twenty-five feet.

He's not content with just moving horizontally. He continues to scale chairs, boxes, our legs, the cat. This behavior is new for us as parents--Xander was not a scaler. I'm dreading the day when I look in and Kai has climbed the bookshelves.

Kai, at 14 months, pushed the chair over, scaled it,
and grabbed the skin cream bottle,
all before we noticed what was going on.

Xander and Kai in a bouncy chair that they are both way too big for.

Xander looks on (and Mommy does, too, with a camera)
as Kai flings himself out of the Lego box after
a failed attempt to get up on the table.

We've quickly adjusted to Micah's new commute schedule. To avoid traffic, he leaves late and gets home late. We share morning childcare, and Micah drops Xander off at school. I race home at 5:00 to pick up Xander at school and relieve Clelia, the nanny, at 5:30. As long as I've got dinner prepped, I can get the kids fed, bathed, Kai asleep, and Xander in p.j.'s and ready for stories by the time Micah gets home at 8 pm. Two to three hours of driving a day for Micah is not great, but for now we're managing it.

Things get all messed up, however, when we don't get enough sleep, and that has been happening a lot lately. We play musical beds, with both boys often ending up in our bed, snuggled up as close as humanly possible to me. I frequently jump ship and sleep in Xander's bed or on the sofa, unfairly leaving Micah to deal with the half-asleep squirming kids.

Observe Kai after a night of squirming and fussing: