All sorts of fun new things

One of the sweet joys of parenthood is watching your kids hit new milestones. There is nothing quite so fun as watching your baby learn to roll over, crawl, take those first shaky steps....then all of the fun talking things, words, phrases, jokes...so fun.
Like Lincoln's new words yesterday. "Cheese" and "poop". Nice. Add to it the fact that a 19mo old saying "poop" over and over is nothing short of hilarious to the older siblings, and he's really learning that one well. Then their are the few that are bittersweet...watching your child learn to ride a bike, then take off and not look back, learning to read and wanting to do their own reading instead of listening to your bedtime stories, you parents know how it goes. And those who don't yet, will all too soon.

Where is this going? good question. The kids are always picking up something new, even if it isn't something exciting. It seems like there are some weeks when they go through sudden spurts of getting older and more independent. Where one day your "baby" doesn't look so much like a baby anymore, and suddenly acts like a rambunctious little boy. Where your 5yr old decides that he wants to go outside and ride his bike with the big kids, not with mom watching. I'm sure it's due to the fact that soon an actual baby will be here, but Lincoln just seems so much older lately. Suddenly he wants to be doing his own thing his own way. And he'd much rather be one of the big kids 90% of the time.

In his efforts to keep up, one of the tricks he is trying to master is walking up and down the stairs. He scares me on the stairs anyway, just because he is way too confident in himself! He took a nice tumble down a friends stairs a few months ago, but thankfully theirs were carpeted, padded, and there is carpet at the bottom. The fact that ours are unfinished and there is concrete at the bottom is a bit unnerving to me. Well, apparently he is tougher than I thought. He was following instructions (that had been yelled at him multiple times from me at the bottom of the stairs) and coming down the stairs backwards on his tummy. phew. Disaster averted....or so I thought. Apparently as soon as I was out of sight, he turned around. I my eagerness to get back to what I was doing, I was buried in the storage room when I heard the infamous Thud, thud, bonk, crash, gasp, shriek, THUD. Then silence before the cry. *sigh* I hate that silence. Since I am not exactly the picture of coordination at this point, it took me a few seconds to hurdle my way out of the storage room and get to him. Thankfully he looked MUCH better than I expected, and the fact that he was crying was obviously a sign that he was breathing. No blood, no broken bones, just a big long tumble down some hard steps with one heck of a landing. The head's a bit purple and red, but it matches nicely where he biffed it the other day and got a nice bonk and a scratch.

(good times with stairs in the neighborhood lately....all at my house.....is this a sign?)

And of course, after being cuddled for just a minute or so, and settling down, he wanted to go play with the boys. At least I got that cuddle in there before he went back to being rambunctious again.