Climbing Right on Schedule

Two days ago our lives changed in oh so many ways.

I’m downstairs with The Boy while the girls are all upstairs getting dressed and Top Management is down here in the office, tending to this week’s four dozen hours of phone calls to various doctors and insurance companies and hospitals and whathaveyou.

I hear glass break upstairs, followed by a soft "oh no!" Well, THAT sounds promising, I think to myself. "Do you need some help, honey?" I ask. "Yes, please," Max says politely. "The bottle says this stuff stains."

Lovely. I don’t even know what "this stuff" is but I know it’s not my friend. The Boy is still bopping around, stopping at the train table every now and again to carefully pick something up and drop it on the floor, usually with a casual "uh-oh" accompaniment. I think, hmmm…broken glass, stainy stuff…right. The Boy stays down while I get this sorted out.

So I sprint upstairs and see Max in the bathroom, standing there in her bare feet, unsure just what to do, a feeling soon shared by her clueless father. There’s glass on the counter, in the sink and on the floor, as well as some orange gunk on the counter, wall, sink and Max.

I pick her up and move her out to hall and have her toss her clothes in the washing machine. Then I carefully pick up as much of the glass as I can. Since the trashcan in the girls’ bathroom is a pseudo-fancy wicker job, however, some of the smaller pieces are likely to drop right through the bottom, or at least I’m afraid of that, so I’m wrapping them up in toilet paper. Then I mop up as much of the gunk as possible. When that’s done, it’s revealed that the bottle was absolutely honest: the sink, counter and wall are all stained (I cannot tell yet whether Max is permanently discolored as we have a family rule to never waste water by bathing more than once per lunar cycle. It could, in fact, be that she’s been orange for some time. Or perhaps she is, in reality, an Oompa Loompa and I just have not previously noticed).

So I get this new cleaning product that a friend of Top Management’s has been raving about and as this friend is not one to normally rave about cleaning products, Top Management took her seriously and bought said cleaning product. Top Management then began raving about it herself but as she IS the sort to rave about cleaning products, I naturally took her ravings with a rather large grain of salt. Frankly, by now I’ve discovered that my adored and adorable Top Management is a liar. I know this because at least once a day she gazes deeply into my eyes and, it feels like, my soul and tells me that she loves me. As she’s on the short list of Most Intelligent People I’ve Ever Met, common sense dictates that an ability to love a dweeb like me is obviously not a trait she would possess, therefore she’s prevaricating when she claims she does.

But I digress. Having no other alternative, I grab this whizbang new cleaning product and begin cleaning. It says to squirt it on the afflicted area (New Jersey?) and wait between one and three minutes. But I don’t have that kind o’ time. The Boy is at the bottom of the stairs, yelling angrily. It’s so funny to hear him swear—given that he’s really only got one or two syllables, his swears aren’t yet very developed but, trust me, he can swear like a drunken sailor. That’s my boy! Not that I approve, of course. Not officially, at least. And, besides, it’s really more like Yosemite Sam: "Rassafrassin’…" Hey, he can’t even say the consonants "d" or "f" yet, so he’s pretty limited. But the intent and the passion are there. Oh yes they are.

But I digress again. So The Boy’s downstairs swearing, I’ve just discovered a piece of glass on the floor I’d clearly missed, as it’s now embedded in my bare foot, I can actually hear the orange gunk bonding to the sink’s molecular structure—this is the sort of stressful, multi-tasking situation I don’t do well. And to those might tempted to ask the legitimate question: and what exactly DO you do well? I can only respond: "Shaddap, you rassafrassin’…"

So I’m scrubbing and reapplying and scrubbing and reapplying and with plenty o’ elbowgrease it’s beginning to come off a tiny bit at a time. Not much, but some progress is being made. And for some reason I’m suddenly aware that it’s quiet downstairs.

Too quiet.

But I’ve got chemicals all over my hands, as well as the sink, counter and wall, I’m still worried that I’ve missed some glass, and every second I delay greatly increases the chances that the bathroom will be permanently orange. And having grown up with an orange bathroom, that’s not a fate I’d wish on any child.

Nevertheless, I’ve got my priorities in roughly the correct order, so I’m just about to yell at one of the girls to go check on their brother when, out of the corner of my eye I catch a tiny bit of movement, followed a nanosecond later by a tiny grunt catching my ear.

I look over, and there’s The Boy. Halfway up the stairs.

Now, I should take this moment of what I hope is at least mild suspense to explain some things. One is that The Boy’s wonderful physical therapist has spent probably a dozen hours trying to get him to go up even two or three stairs at a time, with miserable results. After one step he’s screaming like a banshee.

Next, The Boy’s magnificent occupational therapist (and, yes, if The Boy has an occupation, I’d sure like to know what it is, because if he’s been holding out on me all this time, I’m SO gonna start charging him for oatmeal and bananas, the little freeloader) has spent probably two dozen hours trying to get him to go up even two or three stairs at a time, with miserable results. After two steps he’s shrieking like a mortally-wounded banshee who’s just overdosed on crack.

Finally, Top Management and I have spent probably three dozen hours trying to get The Boy to go up even two or three stairs at a time, with miserable results. After three steps he’s uttering a soul-piercing, lung-bursting sound that shatters every window in the neighborhood. So let me tell you, working on getting him to climb stairs—a practice we almost killed ourselves keeping The Bean from doing when we first moved in, so obsessed was she at twelve months with life-threatening actions—has grown to be not only time-consuming and ear-damaging but mighty expensive too; we may be the only house in town with the glass store on speed dial.

And, of course, as regular readers of Left of the Dial will be aware (if there are, in fact, any readers of Left of the Dial who could be categorized as "regular"), The Boy has a skull fracture. Oh, no, wait, x-rays revealed that he has TWO skull fractures. No, wait, check that: the CT scan revealed that he has only one skull fracture…but it’s far bigger than previously thought, and in fact wraps all the way around his damn head. And, of course, he fractured that skull by falling down. Not from a chair, or any unusual height. Just by standing on the floor and losing his balance.

So to see him standing more than halfway up the stairs, just below the landing, where the staircase makes a right angle, is a tad heart-stopping, to put it mildly. I want to scream something a whole lot more expressive than "rassafrassin’…" but I don’t want to startle him—I don’t want to do anything which might cause him to lose his balance. I want to run as fast as I can to sweep him up, but given the games we normally play, that’s likely to cause him to forget where he is and turn to run away. So I have to content myself with whispering something underneath my breath—oh, but it was a fierce whisper, you can count on that—and walk as quickly as I can towards him, never making eye contact. I sweep him up and bring him upstairs and set him down on the floor in my room. And try not to pass out.

The Boy looks at me with no trace of an expression on his face for five seconds. Then he gets a gleam in his eye and lets out a bark, a clear shout of complete triumph, and starts laughing.

And THAT’s how our life has now changed in oh so many ways. Because the dam has been broken. All he wants to do all day long now is climb the stairs. He still hasn’t mastered the landing, because he still can’t crawl, so he can’t quite figure that puzzle out. What’s more, he doesn’t go upstairs like a kid his age would normally—he doesn’t put one knee up and then boost himself up. Instead he raises his entire leg way the hell up like some dancer on Fame, until his foot is flat on the stair above and then pushes into a standing position that way—it’s exhausting to watch. And the problem with the landing recurs at the very top of the stairs; with no next stair to grab onto, and crawling forward not an option, he’s sorta stuck.

But he’s determined. And so all day we trudge up behind him, one hand always six inches behind his back, ready to catch him should he fall. He hasn’t yet, and he hasn’t slowed down—although when it comes time for his nap or bedtime, he crashes like a drunk on a ballroom floor, so wiped out from his ridiculously strenuous exercises is he. But we should have seen it coming. Of COURSE he couldn’t be coerced into climbing stairs. Just the other day I talked about how everyone hates to be controlled. He was going to climb stairs. He was just going to do it when he was good and damn ready.

Kids. Where do they get these annoying traits from, anyway?

I blame Top Management, of course. Or maybe the Oompa Loompas.

Comments

[Ana Peterson]

I feel like I was there and witness the whole event!
There is no stoping him now. Nice job big boy (Steven - I mean !).

[Caryn]

I love that he did it in his own time. Wonderful child! Excellent play-by-play, Dad.

[karen]

It made me cry. Thanks for sharing it. I found myself holding my breath.