The Newluks

October 04, 2011

I should have known, as I took these pictures, that she we were barreling toward a fall.

And so we did.

She's not quite rolling over all the time, more by mistake than design, but she can wriggle and pull herself around enough to encourage curiosity. Just the other evening, Shea had her happily propped in her bumbo with Sophie on the tray. He turned around and when he next turned back she had our newly potted plant pulled up from the roots. Dirt hanging from her and the plant. Like my Dad says, she advances faster than we think she is.

So yesterday, I had her on our change bench and the phone rang so I dashed to get it. The bench is built into the wall so even if she rolled she couldn't exactly roll off. What she can do, I found out, is wriggle her body so that her feet, then legs, then bottom and finally head slip off the ledge, onto the thankfully carpeted floor. I walked in just in time to see her fall. Not leave the bench but just the blur of her little self as she sailed to belly-flop-face-plant on the floor.

It was horrible.

She was fine. I certainly wasn't. She wailed, I shook and soothed and when she was back to grinning at me in the mirror, I bawled to the random nurse on the end of the health line. Having gone through a series of questions she ascertained that our little gymnast was fine but should be checked over. ER agreed that she was just fine, smiling benevolently at me as we quizzed them on signs of concussion to look for.

Shea, who I'd dragged from work for moral support (he had no students that day), and I were there for 2 hours. During this time we learned that another young patient there had lost his life in a motorcycle accident. It really put my trauma into perspective but made me question this parenting gig (again).

Now, as she howls in the bedroom with her haggard looking Mountain Dad and I gulp my soothing gin, I posit the question again to my dear husband. Isn't there any way we can put her back in the womb? Life was so much easier before. Not half as much fun but definitely easier...