overheard

if you want to know what sort of day we had, here's a few things you would have overheard be said at our house today:

"the lawnmower just ran of out of gas"
"the coffee spilled over"
"she won't stop screaming" (talking about julia belén, not me)
"did you remember to drop off my library book?" (no)
"do you think it needs stitches?"
"your computer is not ready" (after driving half an hour in traffic to get there when they told me yesterday it would be done)
"you know that will take over an hour to cook" (said at 6:30 about a pork loin we were going to have for dinner)
"the propane tank (for the grill) just ran out"
"i think the cheese is burning"
"will the paper catch on fire?"
"do you need to throw up?"

and we haven't even started baths and bedtime for the kids yet. it is 8:45.

lovely day.

i watched him fall

antonio is 4 years old. he is not a toddler anymore, he's a little boy. a fact that i have to remind myself of everyday. he's always been on the small side, and he's a little behind in his motor development. the result, i don't push him much when it comes to doing "big boy" things.

my poor son, he has a mother that, when he wants to jump in the pool, she worries about him hitting his head and suffering a spinal cord injury. or that when he is on his new swing set, he'll fall and break a bone or suffer a head injury. yes, i really have these fears every time he's out there. maybe it's that he's my firstborn and i'm overprotective. maybe it's that, as a pediatric physical therapist, day in and day out i've worked with kids to which those sorts of things have happened. most likely, it's a combination of both.

but as antonio keeps growing and making friends with other boys a lot of his friends are girls since "cousin jesse" moved away, until recently), i see how he struggles to keep up with them. he's the only one of his "posse" that wears a floatie at the pool. he doesn't jump on the trampoline. he doesn't take risks.

yesterday, as he played with his friends, he saw them go across the monkey bars in the backyard. i've told him before he's not allowed to go on the monkey bars unless an adult is nearby. but not wanting to be left behind, he climbed on up. i was standing in the kitchen watching, and realized there was no one close to catch him.

instead of running out, i just watched. he grabbed onto the bars and hung for a moment. then he reached for the next rung and got a hold. i was shocked, thinking he had hung on much longer than i would have given him credit for and that he might actually be able to get across. but then one hand slipped, and  then the other. down he went.

instead of running out, i just watched. waited. he got up fairly quickly so i figured no broken bones since he wasn't screaming hysterically. as he slowly made his way over, i noticed he was a little teary-eyed. apparently, he got the wind knocked out of him when he fell. but other than that, he was okay.

but as i went to bed last night, i actually cried over what happened. i cried because he fell, and i pretty much let him. i cried because i felt bad for him that he didn't get across. what if i've been wrong this whole time? what if i should have been letting him be a little more daring? i kept having visions of the nerdy kid in the movie "little giants" who wore all the padding. it's not like he was jumping from a fence, over a net, and onto a trampoline. he's just been wanting to do the monkey bars. did he not get across the monkey bars because he's just a bit smaller and a bit younger? or did he not get across because i told him he couldn't? i don't know the answer to that question, but it will definitely have me think twice before i tell him he can't do something.

between antonio and myself, i don't know who learned a bigger lesson. maybe we both did.