Part Child, Part Goat, Part Nokia Phone

Crash, bang, wallap. The wee man is not one for risk assessment. I don't know any other child who is as haphazard with their safety as he is. If it didn't look so ridiculous I would probably have him running around dressed in bubble wrap. Because he is so unfazed by life he doesn't stop, literally, at the water's edge. This kamikaze lifestyle has The Chancellor and I on tenterhooks constantly. There seems to be nowhere where we can relax with him.

Today he had an almighty crash in the park where his head met concrete at a pretty alarming velocity. You know with him when something really hurts because he scrunches his eyes up, holds his breath, opens his mouth for five seconds then lets out a ungodly cry. The breath holding bit is quite useful as it gives you time to cover your ears in preparation. In truth we were expecting blood today as we picked him up off the floor. Luckily for all concerned he was fine after a few minutes of crying.

But it makes you think, how the hell don't these children hurt themselves more? I know the bone structure of toddlers is slightly different to that of an adult and the bones bend more than ours do but still. They're almost indestructible like those old Nokia phones that no mater how or where you dropped them they would still be fine. Though I'm not going to be going around dropping him here, there and all about to test this theory, Social Services would have something to say about that.

When the wee man is scaling something that is far too high for him, I often think of those mountain goats that stand, for some bizarre reason, on the edges of cliffs. Why on earth they do that is anyone's guess. The wee man is the same, he just climbs to the point where he can't climb anymore and sod getting down. It's nice to know though that he's more goat than child.

jpr