Procrastinet

Birthday Party - Complete With Potential Maiming!

filed under: Idle Chatter

Pictures are online from Max's 3rd Birthday Party on Saturday - see them all here!

We had a great time - a big thank you to everyone who came. It was what we call in the business an "intimate gathering," which was probably for the best as the weather kept us indoors and even with only 20ish people the basement got fairly tropical - which was nicely in keeping, come to think of it, with the Accidental Tiki theme. ("Accidental" because we didn't go with Tiki out of a burning desire to rock the Tiki party, but because Max was obsessed with totem poles - courtesy of Little Einsteins - and Tiki was as close as we could get, decor-wise).

There was some gratuitous drama, unfortunately: As the main wave of guests had left, and the party prepared to transition back downstairs with the stragglers, Max decided to be a big boy and walk down the flight of stairs himself - which he often does, but more often asks to be carried. I was at the top of the stairs, a step or two behind him.

One of his presents, an oversized, collapsible frisbee ring, had fallen from the railing above the stairs onto the third step. I saw Max try to step around and/or over it, and something told me it wasn't going to go well. But I was a foot too far away and a second too slow.

I think his foot came down on the edge of it that stuck out beyond the stair, so of course it slid out from under him. He lost his balance, and instead of going safely backwards onto his butt he went forward onto his knees, and then pitched headfirst straight down the stairs.

Actually, at first he wasn't going straight - he was angling to the left, which would have put him off the side of the stairs for the six foot fall to our carpeted concrete basement floor. This was when I began choking on my own heart, which had found its way into my throat.

He straightened out, thank God, but still went headfirst down three steps - and then, for added drama, went into full end-over-end Slinky mode, with his feet pitching up over his head and flipping him entirely over. With another half turn he was crumpled on the landing.

I got to him about .2 seconds later, and could see that he was (a) moving and (b) crying, in that awful silent way they do when they're really hurt and/or really scared. As all limbs seemed at first glance to be functioning, I scooped him up into my arms and held him and soothed him (and Lisa, who had levitated down to the landing more or less instantly from the upstairs sofa), and waited for the crying to subside enough that we could see if there was anything serious wrong.

As it turned out, there wasn't. Not a thing. After about four minutes of sobbing and asking repeatedly "why did I fall? Why I went boom? Why I went head over heels? Why I took a tumble?" he was trotting around and playing, happy as a clam.

I was fairly calm at the time - I've been vaguely afraid of him falling down the stairs for a long while, and when it happened part of my brain just went "okay, so this is actually happening. Now we just have to see how bad it is." Plus we still had guests, and I was trying to reassure both Lisa and them that everything was all right.

Saturday night, nine or so hours later, I lay down to go to bed. And suddenly I was freaking out entirely - heart pounding, nauseous, etc. Lisa got me back onto the topic of how stupid "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" was, and eventually I calmed down. By morning I felt fine - it was just strange to see how the anxiety bill came due a few hours later, even though it was dodged at the time.

Anyway - he's totally fine. And he had a fantastic day. It was just a little more dramatic than it maybe needed to be.

And when we're at the top or bottom of the stairs now and he makes his usual request of "carry me!", I'm more than happy to oblige.

Posted by rjt at June 26, 2006 01:18 PM