Surprising! Exciting!

So with Jamie out of town this week, I'm finding that my morning shower has become much shorter and much less relaxing. Normally, we have a little routine. Wake up (not of own accord). Jamie brings Cole to bed if he's not already there. I nurse, Jamie showers. Cole and I play until Jamie is done. That makes it sound like he takes long, but he doesn't - Cole's just an efficient eater these days! Then Jamie takes Cole into the kitchen and gets breakfast started while I shower. Works great! Sometimes, if my bones hurt from extreme tiredness (and exaggerating), I actually take a bath, at great peril to my books. Be warned, if you borrow books from me, they've most likely been in the bathtub. We mix it up sometimes, but generally that's the pattern.

Well, with Jamie gone, so is my (somewhat/not really) leisurely morning moment... I've tried all sorts of things to keep Cole occupied while I'm showering. Forget a bath - I wouldn't even try that! I'm doing the quick shower thing, in and out in like three minutes. Just enough time to wash my face, use some soap, rinse and get out. I only wash my hair every few days and I don't even get it wet in between (shower cap, so becoming).

I block off the hallway between the bedroom and bathroom, leave the pocket door open and keep an eye on him. Good until he crawls over whatever barrier I've put up... Beeline for the toilet, as I've mentioned one thousand times now. I've tried bringing him into the shower, which was fun, but not very relaxing or cleansing for me... I don't like to leave him in the crib because I have an (irrational) fear of him suddenly learning to jump out of it while I'm showering... It's silly because he could wake up and learn to do that anytime anyway, so I don't know why I think he'd do it while I'm showering... Kind of like how for the longest time I stayed away from San Francisco because I had an irrational fear that there'd be a big earthquake when I was there. I've given up on that fear ages ago now and San Francisco is lovely, plus I suppose we live in an earthquake zone anyway so what am I scared of? By the way, I'm not crazy...

Anyway, so this morning I put Cole in the crib with a plethora (good word, unlike suboptimal) of toys, turned the baby monitor up to the highest level and placed it on the countertop. Had a good (enough) 3-minute shower and went off to check on Cole as soon as I was out. Well, whack me on the head with a wet noodle - he suddenly learned to stand on his own!

I came into the room and he was just standing in the corner of the crib, smiling at his reflection in the mirrored closet doors. He's so jolly. I let out some kind of surprised noise the second I rounded the corner - it was so odd to see him standing up like that! Grabbed the camera to document another first. He's been trying to get up to standing on his own for a week or so now, but I hadn't seen it like this ever, or in the crib. He stayed up for ages, until I lifted him out to go to the kitchen together. Next up was distracting him with objects from the cupboards while I made tea and loaded the dishwasher...