As a (silly blog) writer, I consider myself to be quite the analyst of the human condition. If not all humans, then at least the human condition as it pertains to an almost nine-month-old. One thing in particular I've noticed is that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are extremely motivated and those that are severely lacking motivation.
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| And if you're lacking motivation, consider the teachings of Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker... |
It's super interesting to try and figure out which side of
the spectrum Ellie will inhabit as Bethany and I are on different sides. Bethany leans towards being super motivated
and honestly feels bad if she's not accomplishing things. I'm a little more laid back with an attitude
of "It'll get done when it gets done" unless it's something I'm super
passionate about. What's fun though is
that we can already see Ellie's personality quirks forming even at her young
age. What could be interesting for me is
that her personality is definitely resembling her mother's more than mine.
I've written before about how Ellie's new trick of crawling
is definitely her biggest dream come true.
She had been wanting to be mobile since she was about five months old
and now that it's finally happened, she's super ecstatic. Now that Ellie can crawl though, she's set
her sights on higher aspirations, or in some cases, lower aspirations. That's right, Ellie's new life goal is to
attempt the stairs. To be honest, the
idea of Ellie deciding it's time for her to try barreling down the stairs
terrifies me. Not only because I don't
want her to get hurt but because I don't want to have to explain to her mother
how the baby got hurt on my watch.
I feel like I've been fairly lucky thus far. If I'm on a level of our house with Ellie,
she generally won't wander super far away.
At least that's how it's been until today. While I was busy loading our washing machine,
I glanced down to my feet where Ellie was sitting to find nothing but a patch
of carpet. I frantically turned my head
left and right only to see my daughter happily heading towards the stairs with
every intention of reenacting her own version of the "Cliffhangers"
game from 'The Price is Right. With
great swiftness, I basically laid out, extended my arms and grabbed Ellie right
as her hand ran out of solid ground.
While I'm normally pretty patient with Ellie, I really don't
appreciate her attempting circus daredevil acts so she received a stern lecture
with what might have been a slightly raised voice. Like any oblivious person, I assumed that we
were done with Ellie's danger acts for the day.
I may have been slightly wrong about that.
This evening after Bethany arrived home from work, we were
engaging in our nightly tradition of playing with Ellie before putting her down
for the night. Normally Ellie has our
full attention during this time, but we were both slightly distracted by
cleaning up for dinner. We knew Ellie
was close and that there was no way she could get around us to attempt another
trip down stairs. We had neglected to
remember the old adage, "what goes up, must come down."
Ellie had taken it upon herself to attempt the climb
upstairs to her room all alone. Just
imagine our shock when we glanced over to see that Ellie had pulled herself up
three steps. With great swiftness,
Bethany ran over and grabbed Ellie before she had the opportunity to fall
backwards down the stairs. Once we
thought about it a little bit, we realized that we should probably have recorded
the event for posterity. So we did what
anyone else would have done. We set our
iPad on the steps and recorded with a cell phone as Ellie gave us an encore of
her now world-famous climbing act in an attempt to touch the iPad. Clearly a normal reaction for parents,
right? #DaddyWrite
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