My baby girl is a proper little bulldozer. She is not yet cognisant of the fact that the laws of physics will not allow her to transfuse through objects. Amelia barges her way around our flat like a bull in a china shop and gets mad when chairs and tables do not move out of her way. It is both highly entertaining and brilliantly funny.
My 11-month-old-daughter also seems to be under the impression that she is some sort of super-baby who has the power to torpedo off objects and survive. The number of times that she has been caught in mid-catapult, seconds before her head is introduced to the floor, are too many to count. “No Amelia. You are not super-baby – at least not in the flying around the room sense of the word.”
I am glad to say that my little princess has finally learned to navigate her head around the objects in her path. For the past couple of months Amelia’s forehead has looked a beautiful pallet of yellow, green and blue. But the bruises have now (mostly) faded as my child has come to terms with the actual size of her melon.
Amelia also tries to launch herself from one object to another. As she stands with one hand grasping the table and the other cheeky hand slowly extending toward for the couch, which is not quite within her reach, I can almost see her little brain ticking over as she calculates and contemplates her next move. And then, as her eyes sparkle in anticipation, I know that she has given up on calculation and contemplation, and decided to take a dive irrespective of what may follow.
Do I let my child fall and learn or do I save her from potential disaster? My answer is: a bit of both. Firstly, I don’t always see her fall, hence Amelia’s colourful forehead. If I do see the potential for a fall and it looks like it will be bad then I will stop her but if my mom intuition tells me that it will just be a minor bump, I let her fall. I do hope that she will learn from her ‘mistakes’ but after a fall, nine times out of ten, Amelia will get back up and attempt the exact same manoeuvre – sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I do try my best to be constantly aware of where Amelia is and what she is doing – sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Here’s what I have learnt: the trick is to grow eyes in the back of your head and make sure that those eyes are attached to a pair of lengthy stalks – babies move fast and unexpectedly.
That is so true – my boys especially Markus are constantly black and blue from dive bombing and crawling into things – I actaully start to feel bad sometimes that people are going to think I abuse them and Gunther has the tendency to fall head first alot while ‘crawling’ we having figured out what he is doing so his poor forhead is like a constant bruise…..why do they never seem to learn….