I’m not sure when grocery shopping became “me time,” but Sunday morning found me wandering the market, gloriously child-free.

I escaped the usual family shopping trip when Shaggy’s nap went long, interfering with our schedule. Mr. C had a work commitment in the afternoon, and we wouldn’t have made it back in time if we went together.

I shopped as slowly as I could. The kids were manic yesterday. The Poo twirled and skipped around the family room, dropping teeny-tiny toys in her wake, while the baby elephant-walked behind her, eager to ingest every choking hazard he could find. By the time I walked out the door, my head was buzzing with the precursor to a mind-numbing headache.

I even observed the speed limit on the way home. It was that bad.

Little did I know what waited for me.

I walked in the door laden with bags, to see my husband holding a screaming Shaggy—a screaming, bleeding Shaggy.

I stood there for a minute, mouth open, before I scooped him out of his father’s arms and onto the couch with me. I laid him back and saw bright-red all over his mouth. “Washcloth!” I barked. “Get me a very cold, wet washcloth.”

As I gently wiped the blood away, I could see that he had bitten his tongue with eight sharp puppy teeth—five up, three down. His tears dried quickly and he propelled himself head-first at the floor. I let him go, and sat back, my heartbeat finally slowing to its normal rhythm.

The story: he stood up on the low table where we house our desktop, slipped and whacked his chin. Then he fell backward and hit his head on the exersaucer.

And Mr. C was right next to him at the time.

I totally understood how it happened. The child makes a career out of seeking danger. He scoots around the house, often so quickly that he leaves his pants behind, in pursuit of the forbidden. Last week, I turned my back just long enough to answer a question for The Poo, and found him with his entire body inside our TV cabinet.

We are, to put it midlly, entirely unprepared for Shaggy.

His sister was so laid back that she didn’t bother to crawl until she was 11 months old. Then, bored with it, she simply sat down, until she could stand on her own two legs. She never stuck her fingers into electric sockets. She never chewed on cords. She never tried to get into the cabinets.

Shaggy? Check, check and check.

He turns 8 months old today, and last night he ate his first real solid food, homemade macaroni and cheese. He is *thisclose* to cruising from station to station, and he spends hours trying to stand up from a sitting position, without holding on to anything. He falls, hits his face on the hardwood floor, and then tries again.

He loves to empty the bedroom garbage can, dunk his face in the bathwater and tempt fate by playing within a hair’s breadth of deady sharp corners. He is working hard on pinching his fingers in the closet doors, and prefers hairbrushes to teething toys.

I admire his adventurous spirit, being a cautious old soul myself. He is going to be the one who lands us in the emergency room. Early, I fear, and often.

Sunday may have been his first blood, but this mother’s gut knows it won’t be his last.