Our Little Baby Blog

Danger, danger

The past week or so, I’ve felt this overwhelming fear that Anna might actually kill herself. You see once a child starts walking (and FALLING), there is so little you can do to protect them from themselves. The days of holding her hands while she toddles around have slowly drawn to a close. These days she just walks herself around, picking things up, banging, going through boxes or shelves. She is a bundle of curiosity and surprisingly sure-footed, I might add…. Until, she isn’t sure-footed and plants herself face first into our hardwood floors. That’s when I wish I lived in a fully carpeted padded box so that every time she fell it would be into something nice and soft. Dang current interior styles that demand beautiful hardwood, why didn’t I think about that when I was picking out the cherry stain two years ago?

Last Thursday, prior to everyone’s arrival for the Chicago birthday party (yes, the kid gets two birthday parties and, yes, I will be blogging about the party later), Anna fell onto her little wooden alligator push toy. It isn’t a particularly dangerous toy, but it is wooden (as most cute toys are) and therefore, it’s got an edge or two that when positioned correctly can become a bit dangerous. She was right by my feet and fell forward and wham, major goose egg and a little blood. One emergency room trip later, the verdict was that she was fine but would have a bruiser for her party and baptism this weekend. Not great, but as long as she’s safe, we can handle anything.

Or so I thought because today she fell flat on her face – again, right in front of me! – and cracked her lip open a little bit. I say little because I think it might have been complicated by the fact that her lips are pretty dry and the blood pretty much stopped after a few dabs. This time she wasn’t even walking, she was just trying to push herself up to standing and sorta plunged forward onto her face. It’s horrible. I mean I’m torn between fearing for her safety and wanting to buy the girl a helmet and at the same time knowing that I can’t really stop most of these spills. And I’ll admit that I’m also a little embarrassed because I feel like Anna takes more tumbles that other kids – or that other mothers aren’t admitting to them.

I have to say that I love every moment of Anna’s newfound independence. Now that she’s walking, she has become extremely interested in her surroundings and she has an amazing desire to figure out how everything works and how she can get into all our cabinets and closets and nooks and crannies. But, man oh man, the danger that lurks around every corner could give you a heart attack.