When Mr. Burt and my parents asked me what I want for Christmas this year, I had a hard time coming up with anything. (This is saying a lot, considering my Christmas lists used to bear an alarming resemblance to Sally Brown’s.) It was much easier for me to come up with what I don’t want (heavy sweaters, sweatshirts, button-down shirts that have to be ironed…to which Mr. Burt replied in bemusement, “Does that leave anything at all for me to give you?” and which may not be so far removed from old Sally after all); I’m content with the things I have, and there’s very little else that I need.

Except for sleep. But last I checked, sleep doesn’t come gift-wrapped.

It’s been two weeks since Mr. Burt and I had a good, solid night of sleep, thanks to the Burt Squirt going through one of those physical development stages (learning how to pull himself up on the crib rail and beginning to walk) notorious for throwing off sleep schedules. (Also, gas.) Mr. Burt, I think, is actually getting less sleep than I am most nights–though apparently he’s not keeping count.

I, however, am.

Now, I learned rather early on in this parenthood venture that score-keeping is the quickest way to lose the marriage game, so it’s not that I’m sitting up in the middle of the night doing fuzzy math as the Burt Squirt nurses and resenting Mr. Burt for being snuggled up in bed. No, I’ve developed a more noble kind of arithmetic that revolves around me obsessing over Mr. Burt getting as much sleep as I do. Or me losing as much as he does. And me feeling guilty if I get more. Because that just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

A word problem:

If LR goes to sleep at 11ish at night and Mr. Burt at 11:30ish and the Burt Squirt wakes up at 1:30ish in the morning and Mr. Burt gets up with him, not coming back to bed until 3:00ish, how many hours of sleep did LR and Mr. Burt get if LR only slept intermittently during the hour and a half Mr. Burt was trying to soothe the Burt Squirt back to sleep and then got up to feed the Burt Squirt from 3:00ish until 3:30ish but was too wired to fall asleep until after 4ish and then was up at 7ish and Mr. Burt got up at 8ish?

I never was able to come up with an exact answer to my muddled math problem, but I got the gist of it across to Mr. Burt in conversation as we showered and dressed this morning:

LR: “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t sleep very much while you were up with the Burt Squirt.”

Mr. Burt: “Why would that make me feel better?”

LR: “Because we got the same amount of sleep. Misery loves company.”

Mr. Burt: “Oh. I’d rather you actually get sleep.”

For the first time in nine months of being a mom (and in six and a half years of being a wife, really, because I’ve always struggled with (unfounded) feelings of guilt and fear that Mr. Burt might resent me for not being a monetary contributor in our relationship), it hit me:

I don’t have to feel guilty about getting more sleep than my husband does.

Because he loves me.

And fairness and equality, while both very essential ingredients for a successful marriage, don’t have all that much to do with love.

Misery may love company, but love hates misery. After all, love is why we get up when the Burt Squirt cries in the middle of the night and lose all this sleep in the first place.

It brings to mind the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols: What I can I give Him / Give my heart.

Mr. Burt may not be able to give me exactly what I want for Christmas, but he gives me the one thing I really need.

As for sleep…maybe that’s what the Burt Squirt will give to me.

I was reminded of this Mitch Hedberg bit this morning when, as I put on my makeup, the back of a box of Target brand cotton swabs caught my eye:

That’s right–suggestions for how to use Q-Tips. In pictures, not words, so that people of all languages won’t be stuck scratching their heads as to whether cotton swabs come in handy other than for cleaning ears.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Q-Tips as mini brooms for my computer keyboard, but while they might just be the most effective bathroom cleaner ever, I’m not sure they’d be the most efficient–and as a mom of a nine month-old son, it’s all about efficiency.

Speaking of being a mom, it was–naturally–the last illustration that particularly tickled my funny bone. (The next-to-last tickled my gag reflex; is that a picture of a cotton swab toothbrush?)

But use a Q-tip to comb a baby’s hair? Well! If only I’d paid closer attention to my box of cotton swabs before now, the Burt Squirt might not have had to go around looking like this:

Another one for the Mommy Files, I suppose…

Nah, I buy Q-Tips because I want something to clean my ears with. Not because I want a tiny, fluffy comb!

Today, the Burt Squirt has lived outside me as long as he lived inside me. While my mind boggled with every BabyCenter newsletter tracking his development in utero, not a day goes by that I’m not just as surprised, delighted, and amazed by a new skill he masters.

A little less than three weeks ago, that skill was crawling. He started out awkwardly, not covering much ground in a good length of time. Within the space of a few days, he was crossing entire rooms and discovering the fun of a good game of chase, the chief objects of which are Dorrie and Mr. Burt’s and my office chairs. The incident of the Burt Squirt trapping the chagrined cat in the undignified location of her litter box didn’t make for good pictures, but we did get a video of the roller derby:

In addition to being fascinated with wheels (the Burt Squirt entertained himself for about two hours on a coffee shop floor last week–no, I’m not a germaphobe–pushing his umbrella stroller around), his other favorite form of entertainment, discovered after he began to crawl, is the spring doorstops. Loving the sound they make when he twangs them, he quickly figured out where each one in the house is located, as well as how to screw them off the baseboards and detach the rubber end caps.  Which means Mr. Burt and I must come up with a creative baby-proofing solution so as to avoid a trip to the emergency room by way of boingy thing. Not something we expected to be an issue, and it reminds us very much of the first night after we adopted Dorrie and she found a hidey-hole under the kitchen cupboards that we previously hadn’t known existed. It just goes to show: if you really want to know your house, get something small that moves on all fours.

Not that the Burt Squirt’s going to be a four-legged creature for long. This morning when I went into his room I didn’t find him lying on his back, staring longingly up at the plush jungle animals dangling teasingly from his mobile (which was the thing for the first seven months of his life), or up on hands and knees, reaching for them (which he’s done since he became a crawler), but standing up in his crib, clutching the rail, and perfecting the expression that shall henceforth be called the Burt Smirk (no doubt learned from Uncle Greg, of the infamous Greg Bond Smirk, with whom he spent his first Thanksgiving).

Like crawling, pulling up also happened without preamble. He’d barely tried pulling up on anything at all, when one day last week, Mr. Burt, kneeling beside the bathtub rinsing a garment the Burt Squirt had, erm, soiled, looked up to see the Burt Squirt, who’d been playing (with the boingy thing) in his bedroom) standing beside him, holding on to the edge of the bathtub. The next thing we knew, he was pulling up on the ottoman, a shelving unit with pull-out bins, the crib, the stairs (thus far unsuccessfully, thank goodness, as we’ve only installed a gate at the top and not the bottom).

We actually worried that pulling up would prove a little out of reach–literally–as our furniture is large scale for vertically challenged people. The worry was needless, as the Burt Squirt’s had an upward growth spurt, prompting Grandmommy to give him his Christmas presents early in the hope that he wouldn’t outgrow them before he got to wear them. Once again we’re between doctor’s appointments so I don’t know his exact height and weight, but I think he’s around 22 pounds, a weight my baby book (which my mother wrote it more religiously than I do the Burt Squirt’s) shows I didn’t reach until I was about two years old. Regardless of what the scales and tape measures say, he fits most comfortably in 12-month clothes, provided that the pant legs are rolled up. Which seems an appropriate size for him, seeing as most people express surprise that he’s not at least a year old, especially since he got his first haircut.

Like another boy of some note, the Burt Squirt is growing not only upward and outward, but in intelligence, as well. When he was wearing the new boots featured to the left, a Starbucks barista exclaimed, “Look at his little shoeies!” and the Burt Squirt swung his leg up and looked at his suede-shod foot. As the barista took this as a sign of advanced language comprehension skills, I choose to do so, too. He has, after all, begun to say mama, and with meaning–though it would be nice if that meaning were less along the lines of “I’m unhappy with my current lot in life and need you to do something about it!” and more like “You’re more than a food source to  me, and I’m simply delighted to see you!” Just in the past day or two he’s picked up nana, which I must attribute to the increasing frequency at which our little crawler is hearing the word no-no (which was, incidentally, my first word).

I can’t believe I’m talking about first words and first haircuts and first times pulling up in cribs. How are nine months gone already? Nine months seemed a heckuva lot longer when Liam was inside me…People say it goes too fast, but personally I’m glad to have flown through the sleepless nights and days of endless nursing. This is the fun part. Now if only time would slow down a bit…

But I know it won’t–so since the Burt Squirt’s three-quarters of the way to a year old, I’d better start planning that first birthday party.

When I tell people the Burt Squirt is crawling, they give me one of two responses: “Uh-oh, he’s going to be into everything now!” or “Dorrie better watch out!” In this post, we deal with the reality of the latter.

Weary of relocating every time the Mobile One comes near, Dorrie takes refuge in the box that recently delivered Mr. Burt’s new graphics card.

Alas, Dorrie is chagrined to discover that the Mobile One’s wits have developed along with his motor skills, and she has not outwitted him with her little “out of sight, out of mind” game.

Because when it comes to games, the Burt Squirt has mastered the one that goes:  “Where’s so-and-so? There she is!” In this case, Dorrie, unfortunately, is so-and-so.

Dorrie attempts to unnerve the Mobile One with her feline stare…

…but the Burt Squirt is not intimidated.

And so Dorrie wears the look of haughty annoyance that is her most frequent expression these days.

When I told my mother-in-law two months ago that the Burt Squirt would be crawling by the next time she visited, I didn’t think he’d take me quite at my word. My mother-in-law came today, and the Burt Squirt crawled for the first time yesterday.

Hopefully this isn’t an insight into his future study habits, but if it is, I blame his father. I always finished my school projects at least a week before their due dates, while Mr. Burt pulled all-nighters the eve before an exam. Who ever heard of a baby procrastinating?

Even if he doesn’t take after me, I’m still pleased as punch. In fact, I’m prouder of the Burt Squirt for crawling than I’ve ever been of anyone’s achievements, my own included, though I can’t pinpoint the difference here.

One mommy friend suggested it’s that our children are a part of us, so we have some stake in their accomplishments, or that our parenting skills are validated by our children meeting milestones, but those explanations seem a trifle self-centered. Then again, if I’m honest, I can’t deny that after eight and a half months–not counting the ten months of pregnancy–of having a baby need me for everything, I’m heaving sighs of relief that he’s gained independence. So my maternal pride isn’t as untainted as I’d like to believe. But independence, I think, is definitely at the center of whatever it is that tickles me so pink about the Burt Squirt crawling. It’s simply profound when your child does something all on his own.

Which was exactly how this milestone came about. Mr. Burt and I hadn’t been too hyper about the Burt Squirt being eight months old and not crawling. Occasionally we’d put him on his hands and knees to acclimate him to the idea, but we knew he’d crawl when he was ready. And when that moment arrived, I wasn’t even paying attention; I was puttering around the house, getting ready for my mother-in-law’s visit, and then glanced up to see the Burt Squirt up on all fours, lunging out with one pudgy arm as a chubby knee scootched forward, carrying himself across all of two inches of carpet before he flopped down on his belly. He tried again–and again–all day long, and by the end of the night was doing this:

So he looks a bit like a drunken sailor baby…but he’s mine. And he is remarkable to me.

And I think he’ll be walking well before we see my mother-in-law again. Because if I teach the Burt Squirt anything, it’ll be that there’s no value in procrastination.