Monday, October 04, 2004

david's first fall from furniture

It happened like this.

I decided to film David solving the Two Pacifiers Problem. While
getting set up, the phone rang. David sits up swell now, so I felt
comfortable leaving him in the stuffed chair to answer the phone,
watching him while talking. During the conversation David took note of
the plant on the floor in front of the chair and dove for it figuring
that it probably tastes good. I shouted an explicative, dropped the
phone and lunged across the room. By the time I arrived, he had simply
laid himself on his tummy dangling his arm over the front edge of the
chair. I picked him up and finished the phone conversation with him
trying to eat the phone, the cord, my face, the lamp, the wall, the
table, etc.
I then finished setting him up and started filming. Towards the end,
he had solved the Problem, tasted the chair, played with the fringe on
the pillow and was looking around for something else to shove into his
mouth. Oh, yeah, the plant in front of the chair--LUNGE. This time,
though, I was not as frantic since he safely avoided falling the
previous time. So I actually took a fraction of a second to stop the
tape rolling. It was a fateful fraction. Oh bitter, bitter fraction.

Anyway, his head hit the floor first just as I caught the rest of him.

WAIL, deep breath, WAIL, deep breath, WAIL. Really, though, it only
lasted for a few minutes. He was more upset about being put to bed
this evening.

I felt terrible, worse than I thought I would. I had told myself that
a fifteen-inch fall would not kill him and it certainly would not be
his first. But the pitifully wounded cry tore me up. I felt terribly
guilty.

He is over it, though, and is back to shoving the whole house into his
mouth.

Later, pitifully wounded fans.

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