Monday, August 10, 2009

Ups and Downs

There are lots of ups and downs in life. If you live life long enough, you're bound to experience your fair share of ups and downs. Luckily for Kaylani she's only experienced ups in her life so far. Unfortunately for her, she's gotta get her fair share of downs too. Right now, I think she'd welcome a lesson in downs.

Kaylani, the crawling monster, has turned into Kaylani, the climbing monster. The problem is that Kaylani doesn't know how to get down, and I'm not talking about 70's style dancing (although she probably doesn't know how to "get down" like that either). So far, she hasn't run into anything that she hasn't tried to climb. Our bed, her dresser, my hamper, the couch, her pack and play, a kitchen counter, a wall that we sprayed grease on, anything. You name it, she's tried to climb it. Most of the time she's successful too (except for that wall we sprayed grease on). But that's not the hard part.

The hard part is learning how to fall gracefully, or "falling like a lady" as Mommy puts it. I'm not sure what "falling like a lady" is, but it doesn't really matter because Kaylani only knows how to fall one way...hard. The problem is that Kaylani doesn't fall backwards onto her butt. That would be okay since she has a nice cushy diaper on. Instead, Kaylani chooses to fall sideways, which means that when she falls, it's gonna hurt.

There are 2 schools of thought to this. The first is to let her fall sideways and bump herself, as long as it's not against a wall, or a corner, or anything hard or sharp. Of course there's a chance she gets hurt, but there's also a chance that she learns that it hurts and stops falling sideways. The other thought is to catch her every time she falls so that she actually doesn't fall. This way she never gets hurt (or is less likely to get hurt), but she may never learn how to fall gracefully (or "like a lady").

If you haven't guessed, Daddy is much more likely to let her fall on her own while Mommy is pretty adamant on catching her every time. I'm not sure which one is better, but I do know that Kaylani better learn to get down on her own pretty soon. It sure would make our lives less stressful, and possibly less painful. And as soon as she can get up and down on her own, then we'll celebrate and we'll all "get down."

And if you're down with all of that, then click on over to Sports IllustraDad at Dad-Blogs and read my latest column on how kids could change the way you watch baseball games at the stadium. I'm not sure what we'll do in the future, but it's sure worth a thought now!

1 comment:

SurprisedMom said...

OUCH!
Can one fall "like a lady?" I'm a lot older than Kaylani and I never learned. I'm still getting bruises!
Here's hoping Kaylani learns to fall gracefully, or at least less painfully.
Then all of you can "get down" in the best sense of the words.