Yesterday, my father described Axel this way, "When he's laying down, he's you. When he's sitting up, he's like your brother." I realized he was right. When I was a baby, I didn't stop talking. I cooed and babbled every waking minute, sometimes singing at the top of my teensy lungs in the middle of church while my mom played the organ, trying to drown me out. My older brother was the opposite: he quietly, seriously contemplated the mad, mad world whirling around him. Even as a five-month-old, he supposedly gave strangers looks that could mean nothing but "You're a total dumbass."
When Axel's flailing about on the floor, he talks away, smacking his lips and exclaiming over the existence of the dog, his fuzzy giraffe toy, his hands, his ability to thwap his socked feet against the floor, carrying on long conversations with me about the joys of spit-up and dangling butterfly mobiles. Inclined at any angle greater than 90 degrees - lounging in his bouncy chair or his swing, for example - and he keeps on talking. He babbles and grins and shamelessly flirts with strangers in the grocery store from his car seat perched atop the cart while I fill a bag with apples.
Sit him upright in your arms or prop him up in a chair, though, and he's suddenly stoic and silent. He quietly investigates the adults talking to him - many of whom he seems to believe are so close to going violently off their rockers that the less he responds, the safer he'll be. He gives the room a wide-eyed, discerning once-over and seems to be wondering what the hell is going on here. Just by changing Axel's position, I can make his whole attitude toward the world flip.
Let me show you what I mean:
Maybe it's because he's still pretty new to this whole sitting thing - it requires intense concentration to the degree that Axel can't spare any extra effort on a grin or a screech. Maybe the world looks more dangerous and more confusing straight on, without the happy floor-view ambience of track lighting and textured ceilings. Maybe lying down is just much more comfortable and, therefore, more conducive to conversations. Maybe it's pure coincidence and he just wants to be left alone to think whenever he's sitting up. Who knows? It's just another one of those crazy baby things.
