My Dad e-mailed me this video of people *owning* some crazy effing shots, tricks, stunts, and illusions. With almost 6 million views on youtube, I realize I’m a little late to the game.

I dig this in the most vicarious way possible. I hate heights and I hate to bleed. When it began, I thought it was going to be a series of massive fails, me watching through squinted eyes and a screwed up face to cushion the carnage on the screen, but that’s not the case. Also, I’m adding this track to my workout mix. Bonus.

(Much love and admiration to Bill for continuing to unwaveringly document our life, from behind a gaggle of lenses and straps, despite my clucking and occasional eye-rolling. You were right. I will thank-you one day for these. Thank-you.)

Liam has always freaked me out a little. I think most of that feeling stemmed from him being our first baby and us not knowing exactly what to expect…us not knowing at all what to expect. You know in general. Generally, there will be dirty diapers and cracked nipples. Generally, there will be cooing and 4:00 a.m. feedings that leave you clawing for the magical, reanimating coffee pot at 7:00 a.m. Generally, you will feel a crushing love for this wrinkly little person who just kicked the leg out from under the card table holding your half-done, jigsaw puzzle life. But, when it came to specific milestones, every article or book I ever read ended with the equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. ”Don’t worry, anxious, obsessive Mommy! All children develop and learn differently and at their own speed!” Also, true, yet not particularly helpful or comforting. Especially when you’re watching your non-walking 18-month-old from under knitted brow on tilted head tell you the letters of the alphabet and the sound each makes.

When Liam turned 18 months old, he had only been walking for two weeks. Prior to that, he would scoot himself around on the floor sideways in a half crawl, half monkey-knuckle-walk. We called it crabbing. Proper motivation for walking erect arrived in the form of baby-Nate when Liam was 17 1/2 months old. He decided he’d better bring it if he was going to properly battle the new guy. The first time Liam strung together multiple footfalls was in my hospital recovery room when Bill brought him to meet his baby brother. I excused myself to pee for the 30th time that day, and Liam chose that moment to take ten steps across the antiseptic floor. I heard the muffled cheers from my cousin, Jessica, and Bill through the bathroom door.

The potty-training milestone also vexed us. Liam started preschool at the end of October 2008, a few days after his fourth birthday, because we were still trying to get him to consistently use the potty. I know. At the parent-teacher conference a few months later, his teacher laughed and remarked that he had an amazing memory. She had been making up a song one day about the stages of life of a butterfly. When she taught it to the class in the following weeks, she inadvertantly skipped a part. Liam rocketed his little hand up. ”You forgot the part about the chrysalis, Mrs. Dent!” And then he regurgitated the two-week old line from the song that he had heard once in passing. 

And then, he was reading. Not because we consciously taught him to read, but just because he could. We’d be playing Xbox and he’d casually ask, “Why does that say ’press A to continue’?”. “Can you read that, buddy!?” We weren’t sure if he was memorizing or actually reading. He’d laugh and refuse to throw us any more word crumbs until he was good and ready. His Pre-K teacher in 2009 sent home with him classroom books that had interested him in school. She attached pink post-it note explanations like, ”Liam spent all of his free time reading these today. I thought he might want to borrow them.”

When a thank-you card came in the mail from that same teacher at the end of the year, I told Liam it was addressed to him, so he should read it. And, he did. All except the word, ‘Delphinium.’ He resisted reading the card for me on video because he stumbled over that one word and he didn’t want his mistake to be recorded. He made me remind him what the word was so that he could read ALL of the words.    

Liam’s first day of kindergarten is tomorrow. And, none of this was to blarg, blarg, blarg, my-child-is-so-special blarg!!! Liam certainly isn’t the first kid in the world to enter kindergarten reading. But, I do think he’s a bit ahead of the curve. While I’m wildly proud of him, he also worries me. I’m worried because his teachers might not see it and he might get bored. I’m worried because, in his kindergarten orientation pack, the summer activities they asked us to focus on were learning the numbers from one to ten and recognizing the difference between upper case and lower case letters. I’m worried that he’s going to think it’s MUCH more challenging and fun to find ways to piss off his teacher and torture his classmates.

My worry is diluted by the fact that Liam is not worried at all! Our anxious, high-strung little boy is very ‘meh’ and seems bored by all the hoo-ha surrounding kindergarten. I would prefer to see a little more enthusiasm, but I’ll take cool detachment over debilitating fear any day. It occurs to me only now, though, that what I might be reading as ‘meh,’ ‘bored,’ and ‘detached’ is actually confidence. He might be further ahead of the curve than I thought.

We’ll be sure to follow up with pictures and reports of the first day, especially given that this is such a big milestone and we have our own personal Dadarazzi to document it for us.

Last Wednesday, Nate arose from his afternoon nap earlier than usual, so we were playing together downstairs, just the two of us. We started chasing each other through rooms, like one of those heavily-edited scenes from an old “Three Stooges” short… back and forth across the hallway, in one door, out another. Him leading one way, me leading the other. Run, Nate, run.

Whenever I’d stop to allow my lungs, each 38 years old, to catch up, Nate too would immediately stop, then go all ‘concerned man’ on me, and yell “Moooore!”. This last would be punctuated by an almost unconscious tapping together of his little hands, making the American Sign Language (ASL) accepted sign for “more”.

If he loves it, then there should be more. More tickle. More ‘choc’! More running. More chasing. More more.

I let the request hang there for a few seconds, and we just stared at each other - my expression fading, his remaining. Then, we were off again, the concern on his brow smoothing as it must in order to run and giggle without concern. He had his more.

And so it was, until it was not.

One thing you’ll notice if you spend more than four steps with Nate is that he has no regard for his surroundings, or his personal safety. Jill put it best when she said exasperatingly, “That kid is full-throttle, no padding!”

He usually spills out of doorways in a full sprawl, and often runs forward while looking backward. Running across the backyard, it looks like he’s constantly being taken down by unseen sniper fire. He careens through the hallways like a pinball, falling down and popping back up. Falling down, and popping back up. Even as he’s jack-knifing back up to his feet like the Son of Chucky, I’ll already be yelling to Jill about how many inches just randomly separated us from a raucous night at the ER, or a raucous night at home.

This night, it was to be the ER.

He was running in a forwardly direction but looking in a backwardly one. Heading north, and facing south. Suddenly, two things happened at once - I saw that a collision with my laptop table was imminent, and Nate tripped, which caused his prior forwardly and backwardly directions to converge into a single downwardly one. As he fell, he brought his head around.

From my position behind him, just as the front of his face became the back of his hair, his little head shuddered as his face chonked into the cutting edge of the table. He connected solidly, and went down hard. He lay there in complete silence for a beat, and then took in one great whooping breath, and began to shriek. Even as I scooped him up, I noticed that there was blood dripping from his mouth, and onto his shirt. I got him into the kitchen and tried to gently wipe everything off and survey the damage. It was bad, so I did what I normally do if there’s tissue exposed or if someone’s choking on something baked or fried.

“Buhbee! You need to come down here!” I yelled up the stairs.

Jill peered through the gore and concurred. Nate and I were off to the ER, with me driving not only in the Sequoia, but also in a cold sweat.

Nate had stopped crying about his ruined lip three minutes after his fall. For the next two hours, he was mostly interested only in thwarting my attempts to keep him off the waiting room’s bubonic play-gear, and in pointing to the hand sanitizer on the wall in the triage room, signing “more”, and gleefully yelling “Tizer!”.

Note: When applying antibacterial foam to Nate’s upturned palms, ensure that each hand contains a liberal amount. If, when he holds them up to your face, you are foolish enough to blow the Tizer from his hands, know that this outcome will be expected from that point on. If you blow it and it goes in his face, know that he will initially laugh, then point seriously to his eyes and say, “Hurt. Hurt eyes-th”.

More.

Nate was good when the doctor finally came in and performed what appeared to be a gynecological examination on his face. He opened his mouth obediently, and was generally calm and regarded the doctor with quiet, concerned-man curiosity.

“Ti-ZER!” He told the doctor.

The doctor looked at me. “What did he say?”

I explained about the tizer.

“Right. Okay, his teeth look fine. I don’t think they were involved.”

This came as a relief, as Jill and I both feared that they might have come through from the inside out, but were too whoomsey to look. The gaping part of the wound was oriented horizontally on the left side of his upper lip - the rest of it was just superficially scratched. It looked like half of a Snidley Whiplash mustache. I asked if he was going to have a scar there, expecting the doctor to laugh warmly and reassure me that he was only two, and, like a starfish, therefore possessed the ability to grow an entirely new face in the event of injury.

“Oh yes. He’ll definitely have a scar there.”

Shit. Maybe it will disappear over time.

“For the rest of his life.”

Shit.

“And I’m going to have to stitch up that lip.”

Sure thing. I’ll be behind those curtains with my shoes in my ears.

“I’m going to need you to hold him down.”

Dagger.

I held him down while a burly orderly held his head in place. Nate screamed like a crash-test monkey in a jet propulsion lab. That is, until the doctor gave him a shot of Novocain, at which time his screaming reached a level previously unmatched in the long history of Frederick Memorial, and with an urgency approximating the brass steam whistles atop locomotives in the Old West. He screamed so loudly that I couldn’t even hear myself assuring him that everything was okay, and that there was no need to scream so loudly.

Three stitches and approximately four years later, the doctor rolled his chair back and announced that it had stitched together tighter than he’d thought it would, actually.

Now free, Nate clung to me and glared at Dr. Scar.

“Bye-bye!” He said, dismissing him.

Then, he looked down at the bed we’d held him into. “Bad!” he said, with a wave of his hand.

Finally, he looked at me. “Muh-mum and Sam Home!” Muh-mum, Sam, and home… no Liam.

And home we went, to disregarded bedtimes, Muh-mum, Sam, (Liam), and a waiting dinner of non-salty, non-spicy macaroni, juice, and Stove-Top Stuffing - made to order by Muh-mum, who had been in constant contact with us throughout the ordeal.

Liam, who must have been quizzing Muh-mum as to Nate’s whereabouts during our absence, solemnly contemplated Nate’s stitches, looked up at us, and said, “Act-ually, Naynay has stitches.”

Yes, he does.

Later, Jill attempted to put Nate into his pajama top without raking his stitches. Just as his head popped out through the neck hole, he happily shouted, “Boom!”, and we laughed the laughs of parents both amused and relieved.

Jill said, “Yep, you’re a Boomer. Hey Boomer!”

Boomer just stood there, beaming and smiling his zig-stitchy smile… beaming and somehow not falling, and his face told me that there would most certainly be more.

Much more.