Well, it finally happened. J fell down the stairs last night. This has been one of my biggest fears ever since we moved into this house 7 months ago. We used to live in a 3-story townhouse, so J learned to use stairs pretty much as soon as he could crawl. The big difference between this house and that one, though, is that there we had short staircases with switchbacks and landings halfway up. Here we have one extra-long (17 steps!) staircase leading straight up. The stairs are carpeted, but the floor at the bottom is ceramic tile.
J is good at going up and down the stairs by himself, but we're so paranoid about it that we usually walk in front of him when he's going down. Adding to our paranoia is his new "game" of shouting "1-2-3 JUMP!" at the top of the stairs so we've been even more nervous than usual. Last night I was putting J's clothes away in his room while he played with his cars on the floor. As many a parent has said over the years, I only looked away for a moment. One minute he was sitting next to me, the next minute I heard a horrifying thumping sound and TH yelling "Oh Jesus!! He's falling!" It seemed like my feet were moving in slow motion as I started running out of the room, and my heart was racing as I waited to hear a little skull hit the ground. Luckily he stopped falling just short of the last step, and by the time I made it downstairs TH was already holding J, who was screaming bloody murder.
Thankfully he wasn't hurt. Of course TH and I were shaking like leaves and it took all I had to hold it together while we looked him over for injuries. Later TH told me, "When I looked up he was UPSIDE DOWN like he was in a handstand with his head on the step and his body tumbling." Shudder. I still feel sick when I think about that. When J came into our room this morning he happily asked me, "Amember when I fell down the stairs? And it was scary? Amember?" and started giggling. What, this is funny to you, kid? Yeesh. I'm not sure if he learned the hard way about jumping on the stairs, or if now he'll start doing it on purpose. At this rate my hair will definitely be gray by the time I'm 35.
Practice makes perfect
14 years ago
6 comments:
We're still waiting for one of the boys to go down the steps. We have gates at the top and bottom and one of us always walks in front if they're going down. But I always imagine it's going to happen anyway, although in my head, one of them trips into the other and they both go down.
Sorry to hear it happened!
How scary! I am glad to hear that he is okay!!! Its amazing how they do manage to take our breath away and scare us like that!
I'm so glad he's ok. I hate even reading about it. That slow motion memory seems to last forever when they do something like that. I think a ball pit at the bottom of the stairs sounds great.
I think this rates at the top of my "most scary parenting moments" list. Xman was the same age as J when he fell down our basement steps. He was actually walking up the stairs and got almost to the top when he teetered and fell backwards. And like J, he just shrugged it off. Of course we didn't get over it for weeks but at least he's okay. Just wait until he gets a bike or a skateboard, then your hair will really turn white!
I can just imagine. We were at a playgroup and one of the kids fell twice. The second time I swear it was head over heels but each time he did not make it to the bottom. It's scary
Lana fell down the basement stairs the day we moved in, before we could put up the gate. I just took off the gate on her room upstairs, maybe I should put it back--yeesh!
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