It’s a good thing they make infants both flexible and padded, and grant
them a short attention span. But more on that later.
You we going to skip this paragraph, weren’t you? You don’t care
about what I wanted to say here, you just want to know why it’s
important that infants are resilient, and why I could possibly have
used the word ‘cartwheel’ in the title of the post, when it’s obviously
about Lindsay, who as we all know, still isn’t even walking. But
enough of my mind games that undoubtedly are enjoyed only by me, and on
to the meat of the story.
Lindsay and I were doing the routine post-dinner run up and down the
stairs bring stuff back up, because we usually eat in the den.
Easier for us, because she’s always done before we are, and that way we
can just plop her on the floor, and she can go rummage around in her
toy chest and entertain herself while we finish eating. That and
we usually end up eating in the 7 o’clock hour, which contains Good
Eats (for me) and Jeopardy (for Heather) in series.
So I’m bussing the dishes, and Lindsay, as usual, does a 3/4 up, 1/2
down, 1/2 up, 3/4 down routine on the stairs, because I go faster than
she does, and she turns around every time I do. Oh, I’m leaving
Heather out of the story because she wasn’t here, she was off doing
other things. The problem arose because Lindsay’s final 3/4 down
happened to occur over the span of 3/4ths of a second, tumbling heels
over head ("head over heels" never made sense - hats the correct
way for things to be). Fortunately, since i was done carrying
stuff, I was able to leap back around the corner at the bottom and
catch her before she thumped down on the landing. Needless to
say, she was quite upset.
However, after not more than a couple minutes of general
disgruntledness, during which time I carried her around, played her
[insane] mommy-and-me music, and distracted her with oranges (not to
eat, mind you, just to hold), she was back to her normal self. A
careful feel-over revealed no sore spots, aside from a bump on her
forhead that will undoubtedly be a nice buise tomorrow. And soon
after that, she was again running (well, stand-crawl-walk-flopping)
around the den, pulling out all her toys, piling them on me, and then
taking them back away, all as if nothing had happened. And on a
totally different note, she thinks that juggling is about the coolest
thing EVER. Just sits (or stands) there watching, pointing,
giggling and singing at whatever it is I happen to be using.
Strangely, it’s one thing she’s never asked for more of.
I did make one more round trip on the stairs before Heather came home,
though. Just left her in the den, ran upstairs to put the phone
back, and then came back down. During that time, Lindsay had
crawled over from the den to the bottom of the stairs and was pulling
herself up on the two stairs below the landing, peering up the
staircase for me, and yelling "bah" as she is apt to do. We’ll
see tomorrow if she just happened to get that far before I started
coming back down, or if she got to the stairs and didn’t want to
ascend. I suspect the former.
So basically, a fall down stairs of twice her height left her no worse
for wear. If it had been me, I’d at least have sprained something
and be bruised all over, if not broken something (like my head).
That’s why it’s good infants are made flexible and well-padded, with
short attention spans, and now you know the rest of the story.
This is Barney Boisvert. Good Day!
