Ass over Teakettle
On Tuesday I sent an email to my friends and family with the latest Luke pictures, as I've been doing since he was born, and I wrote in the message that another mom looked at me in shocked horror on Monday when I told her Luke was 14 months old as he ran across the playground bridge and slid down the slide by himself. "I could never let my son do that!" she gasped.
Hm.
I planned to head out the park with Luke yesterday, and after we had been home for a little while, I asked him "Do you want to go outside and play?" He backed his way down the stairs to the front door and screamed bloody murder when I stepped into the kitchen for my keys. So, even though it was windy and it drizzled on us on the way to the park, we spent 50 minutes there.
We were at a new park and Luke took on a slide that was straighter and faster than the twisty slide at our regular park. Though I was staring right at him as it happened, I'm still not quite sure what happened. All I know is that he hit his head somewhere on the slide and then slid off head first into the woodchips and flipped over. And then there was some screaming. For about a minute. There's not even a bruise this morning, so I don't know where he hit himself.
I was reading over at Rock Star Mommy, which is a blog I really like, about her second child (a boy) being far more difficult than her first (a girl), and she rushed right into the sweeping generalization that boys are harder and more active. And I sighed a sad little sigh because I hate that statement because it somehow means I was abnormal as a child.
Because when my mom got my email telling the little story about the slides, she had to call and tell me "That was you!". I am, you know, a girl, but as a child I didn't live by the girls-are-calmer rules. The story my mom brought up is that of the little Big Wheel and the hill. When we lived in Jersey and I was small - by small I mean 2 or 3 - there was a large hill in front of our house. I've seen it in pictures (as I don't remember it) and it was a good sized hill.
I had a Big Wheel. But because I was small, I had the smaller size of the Big Wheel - I didn't fit in the larger one. I would push my Big Wheel (which was probably pink and girly, I also don't remember that) up the hill and ride down. Since Big Wheel pedals spun with the wheels, I'd have to stick my legs out to the side to really get the momentum going. Giving the neighbors heart attacks, apparently.
So don't tell me that Luke does these things because he's a boy. He does them because he's Luke.
posted by Elisette @ 7:12 AM
2 Comments:
Oh Lori, it's not because he's a boy. If so I was a boy. My mom said she had to add pages to the accident section of my baby book. Ahem...hit in the head by a swing, ate $1 worth of change, got bit on the face by a dog, split my head open swinging on a bar, and got my ankle caught in a bike wheel and ripped it down to bone. ALL IN ONE YEAR!!! It's sooo not a boy thing.
i wonder how much more it may have to do with 1st child/2nd child.
I was an angel.. although there is some stipulation that i may have egged my brother into jumping from the center of our glass topped coffee table to our couch which was probably about 2-3 feet away. We were about 3 and 1. I think he started it and I thought.. huh.. we can do that?
My mother had to pack away nothing when I was little. My grandfather asked if my parents were robbed when my brother started mobility.
This could fall into the boy/girl thing.. but my dad who was the 1st child, was like me.. in fact his cousins claim that he could've slept in a crib until he was 80 because he never ever climbed out of it. They had to teach him how to climb out. My brother, he climbed out, opened the door and walked up to the front of the house and he was like 13 months old.
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