April Folly

Parenting is an exercise in managing terror. By that I mean everything Jack thinks is fascinating and fun to play with I tend to see as potentially lethal. Yet at the same time that I’m running around the house hiding the knives, I also am wondering whether being over protective is going to stunt his natural curiosity and development. Jack has recently started walking and he is exploring a new level of reality; one that is approximately one foot higher than the reality he has been exploring since he learned to crawl a few months ago. At this new elevation await new things to touch and chew on, as well as new perils. The trick is sorting out which things need to be immediately removed from his grasping hands (glass, electrical cords, the oven, radiators, the computer, cameras, etc., etc.) and which are benign enough to allow him to fool around with. (Remote controls, whatever is on my plate at dinnertime, DVDs, stereo controls, the cat). Some things I take away because the potential for a time consuming clean-up outweighs whatever intellectual satisfaction he is gleaning from the experience. (The cat’s food and water fall into this category, as do most things in the refrigerator. I’d also lump 5lb. cans of decaffeinated coffee from Costco here. I’m still not sure how he managed to get the lid off-but what dexterity in those little fingers!) Then there are the wild-cards, like balloons. There are still a few balloons kicking around from the party and Jack loves to bat them around and chase after them. This is a relatively benign pastime, although I wish he was wearing a football helmet since he has a little trouble with balance and coordination. Moreover, he likes to chew on the knotted end of the balloon, and I hazily remember reading somewhere that this was very bad since he could choke on it. I’m not the sort of person that takes balloons away from children though so I usually let him gnaw away under my watchful eye. I figure when the first one pops mid-bite he’ll probably seek out other inanimate objects to nibble on.