Concussion, anyone?

Isaac is lots of fun now, being the little spunky-monkey he is, but he is so much more work and SO much more worry. His very new favorite thing? Seeing just how often he can hit his head, and on how many different objects. You may remember the big shiner from the pot (was that last week?). Well, now that he is sitting up like a champ, and his balance when on all fours is much better, its like his great big cranium has its own gravitational force, pulling sharp or hard objects toward it. He tries to climb on things now that his balance on all-fours is better, and can do a lean-over-"standing" thing whenever he climbs on stuff -- his favorite objects being that evil pot and his old bouncy seat -- and this is infinitely amusing to him, so he seeks to do it often. And just as often, he bumps his head. His noggin gets it on his way up the object, and very often on the accidental way down. When he's playing in the living room, he crawls under the edge of the coffee table and then pushes his head up into the wood, presumably just for the purpose of jogging his brain. When he's crawling around the hall, he inevitably head-checks the wall-corners. But the worst is when he's in his all-fours position. He is still incredibly intrigued by the get-up-on-all-fours-and-rock shtick, which often leads to bumps when he gets himself over into the proximity of the wall.

At first I thought that all of this was because I was a deadbeat mom, putting my baby so near all these potential head-collision sites. "I can't help it!" I whimpered, "Our apartment is so cramped!" But then I realized that it wasn't just me, and I can't possibly stop him from his inexplicable desire to concuss himself. This realization came one day when I greeted him as he awoke from a nap in his crib, and there he was, on all fours, rocking back and forth and repeatedly crashing his little skull into the bars of the crib. He gave himself little red spots from doing it so much, but it didn't even faze him. Please please please tell me he isn't damaging his poor developing brain; tell me that this is what his great Klingon dome is for.