I was complaining about this online yesterday, but I’m out of blog entries and the one I want to write still feels too personal, so I’m going to gripe about it again.
Remember a while ago, we featured a guest blogger and her picture of her guardian angel, shaking and clutching a beer? I think Kiddo#3’s guardian must have really identified with that.
Kiddo#3 is five. He is a daredevil. He tackles life with an enthusiasm and an exuberance that would make a force five hurricane stop and say, “Wow, he’s got energy.”
In early spring, Kiddo#3 ran into a tree playing football in our yard, requiring eight stitches in his forehead. This is the same child who is currently grounded from playing in the yard without my supervision because he kept sliding down the deck railing (20 feet in the air.) He climbs on everything. He jumps off things. He runs (and I suspect this is how he ran into the tree) while looking backward over his shoulder at the people chasing him.
I’ve seen this child hurl himself into a brick wall, bounce off, and do it again. During the winter, after an ice storm that left me inching up the driveway at a speed even a snail would find embarrassing, he ran full-tilt down the brick steps on our front walkway–brick steps covered with ice.
Last summer, he pitched forward on his brother’s scooter and knocked one tooth out; the second was loosened. It looked like he’d keep it, but after a week (just as it was about to firm into place) he jumped on his sister to strangle her,and she punched him in the face, knocking out that tooth. (I wasn’t sure whether to punish her or to thank her, since the dentist wanted to extract the thing for $200.)
And last week, while at his sister’s baseball game, right after we told him not to play on the giant stone pipes abandoned beside the field, he climbed on the pipes, jumped, and came down on his face. He cut the outside of his lip, the inside, and made the other tooth wiggly.
We babied the tooth for a week. Lots of yogurt, all his food cut into tiny chunks. It began to firm back into place, but on Sunday night I looked and it had turned brown. Meaning, I guess he’s going to lose that tooth too.
Hello, orthodontia.
Has this new accident slowed him down? Well, the last time he was at the park, he and his sister climbed into a gazebo thing overlooking the playground. Kiddo#2 said, “I wonder if someone could jump off this wall?”
So he threw his baseball glove down to make sure it was safe. And then he jumped off the wall.
(No, don’t ask me why the glove’s safe landing would prove it was safe for him to jump.)
Right now, I need to close my eyes and wake up in fifteen years to see whether he’s made it to adulthood. I’m not sure this daredevil will survive. Or, if he does, if I’ll have survived too. One of the women who posts on my forum assured me that daredevil kids do, in fact, make it to adulthood. They just do it in a lot more pieces than the rest of us.
The other day, he said, “I want roller skates.”
I laughed out loud in surprise, the mental images too many to catalog. No. No. For your mother’s sake, no.
i don’t know what kiddo#3’s official name is (i’m thinking “kiddo#3” might be difficult to find on a keychain) but if you didn’t name him “joe” or “jason”, i think God might be trying to send you a message now that he was misnamed.
Actually, Keyop would work too.
I’ve been thinking the first three should have been Yakko, Wacko and Dot, and it actually fits, but then I can’t think of what #4 would be.
My cousin was on a first name basis with the ER docs at “his” ER. He is now in his mid-20’s. He has this cool truck from the 1930’s that he has rebuilt. He is very responsible. Has a blast with the little kids. Holds a steady job. Helps out his parents and grandparents regularly.
In Australian (or more strictly Strayan) you could call your kids Garry, Barry, Darrell and Sharon. They they would become in daily life Gazza, Bazza, Dazza and Shazza.
Ah, the music!
I could call the boys Larry, Darryl and Darryl, but that would get confusing. 😉
Or I could just call them all Bruce.
as in Lee or Willis?
Or Wayne too. 🙂 We could even open a museum dedicated to them: http://www.brucemuseum.org/
My younger (middle) brother was known in various ERs as “Him again.” He grew up to be the local “kid shepherd” in his neighborhood.
As a former stunt boy, I can offer my single data point of surviving not only to adulthood but to the point of passing my stunt boy genes to another generation of stunt boys. However, my mother has some permanent scowl marks on her forehead that I’m pretty sure were not there before I came along.