I’m sure this will not be my only post on boys and the adventures that come with raising boys. I knew that with boys we were going to have tractors and fire trucks everywhere, nothing would be done at a walking pace, block towers and buildings would be scattered throughout my house, and scraped knees, bruised elbows, and nose picking were a fact of life. Somehow I had forgotten about broken bones.
It wasn’t enough that Leighton broke his foot last summer. Now in case you are starting to think that our two boys are crazy and wild and out of control, they are actually fairly low key, ie we can go to a restaurant with them and actually make it through a meal without driving our waitress, other patrons or ourselves crazy. And while they are both 100% boy, on the scale of out of control they are very much at the opposite end. However last summer after spending the entire summer trying to encourage Leighton to climb things at the playground, one day he decided he was going to follow the neighbor girl up to the platform above by climbing a set of bars. I was so excited for him to be stepping out of his comfort zone and doing something new. And that lasted all of 3 minutes until he got to the top (about 10 feet in the air) and after saying “look at me mommy”, promptly let go and fell straight down onto his left foot. Go figure, ER visit #1. I felt bad, but I thought, “you know, making it to past 3 years old before our first major injury isn’t too bad”.
Of course that was a bit premature of me. Caedmon is not nearly as cautious as his older brother, not because he is a daredevil, but because he wants to do and be exactly like Leighton. If that means that he does something that is above his ability, then he’ll figure out a way to get that done. I love watching how much he watches and tries to do what his older brother does. And so about a week before he turned one, he had been army crawling his way up the hallway and I turned to vacuum something in the study real quick. It was with that that I heard “THUMP, THUMP, THUMP and then pause and SCREAM”. While I thought he was headed up the hallway, he had in fact turned and thought that it was a good day to conquer the stairs. Never mind that he had never climbed the stairs before, it was his day. And so he spent his first birthday in a cast with a buckle fracture of his right arm. Go figure.
And so our adventures with casts continues. And as sure as I am that I will spend many nights crawling into bed removing lego creations or plastic helicopters out from under my sheets, I will also spend time wiping tears away as an xay is taken and figuring out the best way to give a bath with yet another cast on. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Hiking Mommy 