danger boy

Joseph seems determined to show me how dangerous everything around him actually is. In the past week he has figured out how to roll over onto his stomach and how to grab things with almost perfect accuracy and then shove them into his mouth. He has managed to combine these skills to flip his play mat (the thing with the foam bars that the toys hang from) over on top of himself. Here he is, amid the wreckage:


Doesn't he look triumphant? Or smug?


Yesterday morning he liberated one of the sea creatures from his mobile. He figured out that if he grabs quickly and pulls with all his might, he will be rewarded with a fistful of octopus, which he then eats.

I do think that most of the conventional baby rearing wisdom overstates the dangers of practically everything, but now that he can roll over onto his belly and get stuck there, or possibly roll off the bed, or suffocate himself with his play mat, or strangle himself with the string from his mobile (or, as Scott pointed out, swallow the string from his mobile), I am a little concerned. This, I suppose, is why people have play pens. Except for how proper play pens don't seem to exist anymore, and have been replaced by those extremely ugly pack and plays, which I do not want to see in my house, and which, if I did have one, would probably host a cage match between the baby and one of the dogs. So I think I will just keep my eyes glued to the baby.