According to the baby doctor books we immersed ourselves in (okay, K immersed herself in; I went wading) when Reid first came into our lives, this was bound to happen. Still it is jarring.

As anybody who read this work much in the first seven months of Reid's life knows, Reid was not a sleeper. He remains adversarial towards sleep, addressing it (rather like his father) as if sleep were a tedious chore he would rather speed through or skip altogether. (His mom, on the other hand, relishes sleep like a luxurious bath in the fountain of youth.) Still, in the last few months, it seems Reid has made his peace with the land of nod, usually adhering to a fairly basic but still trying schedule of fitfully slipping into sleep around eight and then popping right out of bed at six in the morning, raring to go.

But the books told us that another change was possible, one which coordinated with his recent fascination with walking. It seems that the whole idea of self-directed locomotion is such a powerful one that Reid will sometimes be jarred from sleep by the very concept of walking. Once awake, however, he doesn't just lay there and yell like he once did.

(In fact, since he has skipped crawling entirely, Reid would awaken and then propel himself on his stomach across his crib in what the pediatrician called a "commando crawl." The commando crawl has no reverse, however, so we would respond to Reid's shouting and find him comically [if it weren't so tragic] lodged headfirst in the corner of the crib with a panicked expression and a full-bore wail loosening from his mouth.)

No, it is now frighteningly routine for us to walk into his room and see him smiling at us, all the sadness of his wailing just a ruse to get his parents in the room. The smiling face is perched atop a little body ... proudly standing in his crib. There he stands, eyes wide at the very notion that this previously impervious prison has a porous boundary up top and he has pierced it. His smile is irresistable, but the omen of our little man up and about is a dark one indeed.

On doctor's orders, this family returned this very eve from the first of several expeditions to baby proof our house. More from this adventure soon.