How To Climb Out Of Your Bouncer

Step 1: Cry whenever you are strapped into your bouncer, which will trick your parents into leaving you in your bouncer untethered, seemingly for your comfort, but secretly to plot your escape. This was a step that Xander the Cunning mastered early. Crying on command is one of his specialties, but he does it so rare that each cry provokes the maximum response from mom and dad.

Step 2: Rotate your body so that you're facing the bouncer. Xander had this one figured out a month ago. From this position, you are no longer enveloped in the hammock-esque nature of the bouncer and are able to move around with greater ease.

Step 3: Slide down so that your legs dangle over the front of the bouncer. This step was the trickiest for little X. At first, he tried to hook his legs over diagonally. This was problematic, because then he could only balance himself with one arm instead of two. But once his legs were part of the way over, he couldn't wriggle back onto the bouncer either, and became trapped in mid-air as though in a spider's web.

Step 4: Use your arms and upper body to push off until your legs touch the ground. This is not a complicated step, but the strength to pull it off doesn't come overnight. For Xander, the ability came a couple of weeks after the discovery.

Step 5: With your legs on the ground, slide your hands back underneath you, until you are standing and are using the bouncer as a sort of walker. As with Step 4, Step 5 requires a little bit of upper body strength, but unlike Step 4, the strength for Step 5 came to Xander a little quicker.

Step 6: Push yourself backwards, breaking free of the bouncer, i.e. sit down. Xander had come close to the final step a week or so ago, but whether he just wasn't ready to break free, or got tired, or whatever the reason, he didn't want to do it. He would just stand there, feet on the ground, leaning on his bouncer, with a sort of half-smile, half-cry plastered on his face. But last Sunday, as the Patriots were busy throttling the Buffalo Bills, Xander broke free of his bouncer once and for all.

To add insult to injury for ye ole bouncer, once X was free of it, he decided he wanted to eat the little green rubber bases that serve as its feet. Luckily, they don't detach, but Xander was strong enough to lift them up to his mouth and slobber all over them. The bouncer retained a modicum of its dignity when it subsequently pinned Xander's leg, but it was a minor victory at best. Soon enough, Xander slithered out from under the bouncer's control, and while he still enjoys taking naps and watching his Baby Einstein videos (or whatever sporting event daddy is watching) from the comfort of his bouncer, Xander has shown decisively that he now has the upper hand.