And So It Happens

There was a point yesterday afternoon where I was unsure whether I was at long last losing my mind, or if my daughter was the possessor of super-powers. My son had decided to make yesterday one of those rare days where he clambers up onto the couch and settles down for a nap; my ten-month-old daughter sat on the floor with her teething blanket watching a video, so I thought I would take the opportunity to go upstairs to check my email and shut down the computer.

It was only a couple of seconds before the baby noticed that I was gone, and I heard her crawl over to the steps and start banging on them with her little open palm. She does this frequently, as she has decided that the stairs are great fun and she likes to climb up and down, up and down, on the bottom step. She had only once managed to mount the second step.

Over the next minute or so I could hear her smacking and happily jabbering which perplexed me a little bit because of late she has been suffering from acute separation anxiety to the point that I can rarely go to the bathroom without actually taking her in with me. I turned off the computer and swiveled the chair just in time to see her proud smiling face peek around the corner from the top of the steps.

I made reference earlier to the fact that I thought I might be losing my mind, because when I saw her at the top step I became instantly confused and wondered how I could have forgotten that I had brought her upstairs with me. I figured it was out of the question that a tiny person, weighing a mere thirteen pounds at her ten month check-up, would have been able to climb three steps onto a landing, make a ninety-degree turn, and scramble up an addition ten steps. Being fairly certain that I had not brought her up myself I naturally concluded that she must be capable of flight.

After making a couple of frantic phone calls (mainly to re-assure myself that men in dark suits wouldn’t be knocking on my door to take my children away because of some perceived neglect) and fervently thanking God that my daughter didn’t tumble down the stairs and break all of her bones, I decided it would be a good idea to watch her in another attempt so that I could see how she had managed to get safely to the top looking so proud of herself. She may have only been able to mount the bottom step at breakfast, but now she was zipping up those steps like she’d been doing it for weeks, chattering and shaking her head around, with her pants falling down the whole way up.