Bring on the gray hair

Throughout my life my mother would periodically look at me and exclaim

"When you grow up, I hope you have a daughter who is exactly like you".  It wasn't a compliment. This usually came after I broke something, talked back, or just caused general mayhem. I know, I know. You're all thinking to yourselves, how could that be? Certainly I never did anything naughty or wrong growing up. I was the picture of patience and obedience and overall sugar, spice, and everything nice.

True, there are those who could spin a yarn or two about me falling out of trees, getting impaled at construction sites, hoarding buckets of salamanders, getting my snow boots stuck and coming inside with only my white lace church socks on. Perhaps I needed my mouth washed out with soap once, and yes maybe I used to hide my little brother in cabinets and tell my mother I had no idea where he was. But I was just high spirited!!!

Anyway, after giving birth to 5 amazing little boys in 4 1/2 years I figured I could safely thumb my nose at the silly mom curse. Ha! Mine were all boys. There's no way I'll have one just like me, they're not properly equipped. At worst I figured I would have trials similar to what Matt's mother must have gone through raising him. But considering he turned out captain of two sports, an NHS member, valedictorian, engineer, certified mad scientist genius, I liked my chances. Even if all 4 boys that God saw fit to let me raise needed ritalin drips and countless layers of stitches, I could do that standing on my head.

Do your worst Almighty!!!

Enter my youngest child. Murdoch Joshua Caellum. Age: 2, Height: mid-thigh, Weight: 26 pounds of pure hell. Please, if you ever come into contact with this adorable baby do not let the floppy blonde hair and ocean blue eyes fool you. Beneath lies the soul of a terror Dennis the Menace could never have hoped to attain. Now don't get me wrong, Doc is a source of laughter and joy 95% of the time. His giggle is infectious and his willingness to try anything and everything is inspiring. Yes, I find inspiration in my two year old. I find boatloads in my three year old, but that is another story.

I'm not going to spend more time on the great 95% of Doc. He's a bowling ball of entertainment and loves his mama! It's that last 5% which provides the subject for this latest missive.

Doc came into the world 9 weeks early after my final, arduous pregnancy. After twice daily shots and three months of complete bedrest he still showed up just over two months ahead of schedule. His very first night he let us see just a glimpse of how he was not like other premature children. I was wheeled up to see my newborn after we were both stabilized. The neonatologist told me he was doing ok considering the circumstances, but he could not properly breathe on his own and would need to be intubated. I touched his tiny chest and squeezed his miniature hand and told him to be strong, that mommy loved him so much. They needed to work on him, and the staff wanted me in my room. By the time we rode the elevator down one floor to OB and parked my bed in my room the phone rang. It was the NICU telling us that they didn't know what I said or did to Doc, but he had turned around and no longer needed to be tubed! He was strong, a fighter, and wouldn't be told what course he was to follow from his first hour of life.

Doc was the only one of our four boys who ever figured out how to climb onto the dining room table (a high, bar top height table) for entertainment purposes. That was at about 15 months of age, even now at 2 it is an ordeal for him to summit the oak beast. Our table has a wooden rounder in the middle and this baby loves to crawl onto it and have his brothers spin him like a top. Seriously, it's like he's an item up for bids on the Price is Right!

Our new house has an above ground pool in the back with a wooden ramp leading up to it. There are handrails on the ramp that are about 3 1/2 feet off the ground for about a 4 foot drop into the pool. After seeing his older brothers walk the plank to jump in, Mr. Bigstuff had to do it himself. Was he scared to be over his body height in the air on a narrow beam? No. Did he extend his hand to have a capable adult offer additional balance? No. Did he even attempt to get anyone's attention before flinging himself into the water? Certainly not. Thankfully I was there to catch him. We figured it would scare him and the one time would be it, but after the next 20 jumps we knew we had thrill seeker on our hands.

With the weather cooling we moved away from our exploits in the water to playing in our yard. Our driveway is very long and goes on a fairly steep grade. The older boys love riding their scooters, bikes, and big wheels down the concrete roller coaster at break neck speed. They lug their vehicles up and scream their heads off the the whole way down recreating MarioKart. Naturally, Doc figured if Cooper and Wesley could do it, he surely could. And so it was that this not yet two year old grabbed the handlebars of a big wheel that was bigger than him and hauled it all the way to the very top of the driveway. I held my spot at the bottom wondering how this was going to turn out, but deciding to take the National Geographic approach and not intervene. Like I said, stitches and blood do not scare me. One of two things would happen. He would either have a successful run or take a fair amount of skin off. Either way I sat back down in my chair and waited for the show to start. I even whipped out my precious smart phone to take some video (just like on NatGeo!).

It was like a bobsled race people, no joke. He straightened the handlebars, pushed with his feet a few times to gain speed, and took off like a well tanned Nordic bullet down the run. What he had not planned on was the fact that our driveway curves to the left at the bottom. Of course there were other obstacles, Matt's car by the house, the large evergreen right before the curve. But a 22 month old cannot correct his trajectory while traveling at his little terminal velocity.

Smack!

Doc went right into the left rear wheel well of Matt's car. (That's when the video stops) I held my breath and waited for his reaction. Matt and I have a very firm policy regarding reacting to our children when they fall or do anything that normally elicits gasps from other parents. We do nothing, literally nothing. We wait for them to look at us and base our reaction on what we see in their eyes. 99% of the time we wind up cheering and telling them to get up and try it again. There are those who say our overly tough guy mentality is odd, but we don't have kids who think they're dying every time they fall down either. Doc looked back at me and I could see there was no blood, no scrapes, nothing. So I acted like he had just finished the Tour de France in record time. He shared my enthusiasm, and grabbed his trusty steed to head up for round 2 (which ended with a head on collision with the tree, and was again met with overwhelming applause).

It began to sink in that I had a grade A daredevil on my hands. He wasn't afraid of heights, water, speed, or the potential for injury. Now folks, those feelings are instinctual in all of us to varying degrees as a means of self preservation. Not with this one. And it forces me to think about things differently. Should I keep my towels high up and hard to reach to prevent any attempts at flying off the roof? Do I need to keep the car keys in a locked box for fear of some sort of Grand Tourismo adventure? Will I eventually get on a first name basis with my local ER docs for my baby who is also called Doc? Will that name wind up seeming oddly ironic?

I'm game for anything of course, and L'Oreal makes wonderful products to cover any follicular stress my budding Evil Knievel places on me. But more than anything I look into those bright blue eyes and think

"I hope one day you meet a wonderful woman and get married, and have a baby exactly like you."