We spent the first three months just wishing Kaden would start, you know, doing stuff. Anything really, other than crying and looking blankly at the ceiling as drool formed on his chin. Now the pace is blistering and we are just trying to keep up.

He has now entered training mode, and I can hear the Rocky theme playing in the background. For instance this week he started crawling. Not just the injured soldier crawl that he used to do, this is the picturesque stomach raised crawl worthy of some photos (and you know I've got 'em). The only reason he stops crawling is to practice standing up. I was in New York one night (one friggin' night!) last week and I missed him teaching himself to pull up from a sitting position.



Kaden is so motivated it's like he's got a silent little drill instructor in his head. He starts some activity, such as learning to walk around the table, and just does it over and over till he has it down. His new favorite game is doing squats by dropping stuff on the ground while he is standing and trying to maintain balance while picking it up. He'd be walking by now if his feet weren't so rounded that it must be like walking on peg-legs.

We're calling him Scrambles because he is always active.. always. Frankly I think he's trying to show me up, and I'm feeling pretty lazy.

It's all wonderful and stuff, but couldn't he just chill and do something more mind-numbing like watch television. It's got me calling in the reserves just to keep him occupied, which in yesterday's case was the trendy high school staff of Abercrombie & Fitch.

With their aloof attitude to customers and rare interactions with children they are the perfect distractions for Kaden. Megan seems not to agree, and I think it mostly has to do with my tactic of just facing the stroller towards the register in a very expectant, "well, he's facing you - DO SOMETHING!" kind of fashion. Megan seems hung up on this whole idea of not imposing on other people.

But it is not as if the high school girls behind the counter care about the customers. Plus they love playing with kids. We've got a friend who has a kid the same age and sometimes feeds her child breakfast at the local Starbucks just so other people can entertain the baby.

Like most parents we started out overjoyed that he's so engaged and alert. But there's always a price. As Megan says, as soon as he learns to talk, he learns to talk back. And in this case, with the alertness comes the era of constant entertainment. He's just constantly filling his brain with new activities, and not a second to spare. Time to pull out the old Physics text books and get him started.