Ginger climbs

The minute my son, husband and I walked in the door, the grandbaby opened her eyes wide, puckered up and began to wail as she turned away from us, hiding her face in her mother’s shoulder. For the next several hours, the baby studied us from a distance, staying close to the safety of her familiar mother, sporadically staring at us and whimpering. One visiting uncle sulked in a corner disappointed that he could not get close enough for even a picture.
“Just be patient,” I urged him. “It’s normal for a baby to go through a phase of being absolutely terrified at new people.”
“How long does this phase last anyway?” he grumped, looked at the baby clinging tearfully to her mama. He had come for a weekend visit to see her crawl across the floor on bent knees to him.
“Give her a while. She will warm up after she learns our faces.”
He didn’t like it, but stayed on his side of the room, smiling and making funny noises at his niece. She would start to laugh, look at him closely, cry and reach for her momma. Finally she wore herself out and was taken to the bedroom for a nap.
When she woke up, her momma carried a sleepy-eyed baby to the living room where we sat. From the security of her mother’s arms, the little one saw us and her face brightened. She had seen these folks before. She grinned at my son and reached for him.
The rest of the visit, she allowed us to play with her, pick her up and carry her away from her mother. As long as she could see her momma’s reassuring smile across the room, she was happy and smiled while her uncle filled up a roll of film.
That was our last visit to the baby’s first home. Her parents signed a lease for a different apartment down the street. They took the mattress off their bed and carried it to their new home. For days, the baby climbed up the mattress and slid the eight inches to the floor. She was as absorbed as a mountain climber conquering new heights.
When her mother e-mailed the baby’s level of activity, I climbed up into our attic to get the child’s safety gate I purchased at a garage sale last year. It was time to restrict exploration in dangerous areas.
I took the gate along when we went to help them move. The seven-month-old was over her stranger anxiety. She glanced at us, puled herself up on the chair and smiled proudly at her full 26 1/2 inches of height.
I set-up the gate and went to help them settle in. I was not the only one concerned about the child’s safety. I could not push in the plug for a lamp I moved. Protective mama had thwarted the tiny researcher’s efforts to probe the world by covering every electrical receptacle with a clear safety plug.
After we left, her mother e-mailed, “She figured out how to climb up the gate a couple of inches. She holds on to the top and watches us move around in the kitchen. She is my little monkey.”
Sure a little monkey smiling over a gate at strangers.