Xander Week 63 - What Goes Up, Must Come Down…
January 8, 2008
The day before Christmas Eve Xander learned to climb. This was nothing that we encouraged or even showed him how to do. Xander figured this out all on his own. He discovered that he is now tall enough to grip both sides, or depending on the height, the back rails of a chair. He also discovered that he has enough arm strength to pull himself up onto said chair.
This has become the source of endless entertainment. Not the sitting so much as the standing and dancing on the chair. This has caused the rest of the family to gasp and wince more times than I can count when he nearly falls off, or nearly tips a chair over.
Statistically, Xander could not continue climbing up on chairs without eventually falling down. Xander of course decided that Christmas day would be a good time for that. He managed to get himself up onto our couch, but the triumph didn’t last long. Shortly after he got up, he tumbled off, leaving a respectable cut on the side of the bridge of his nose. This was not enough for our little guy though. Less than an hour later, he was playing in the bathroom with Zach and Zach’s father (they were measuring walls to get an idea of how much trim we were going to need to purchase later in the week for our house project). Xander discovered a bottle of detergent on the floor and attempted to carry it away. It didn’t take long before he tripped (probably over his own feet) and his chin landed on the top of the bottle, scraping off the skin.
It looked worse than it probably was, but after the bleeding stopped, Xander had a managed to scrape all of the skin off his whole chin. He had perfectly timed these crashes to coincide with the Christmas Party we were headed to later that afternoon. This party would include all of the friends and family we had not seen since last Christmas, and in some cases, even longer. Mostly people had been asking about Xander, wanting to see him. My son, with his good timing, looked like he had been scuffling in the day care play ground for the day, rather than opening Christmas presents.
He was his usual adorable self, and even with bumps and bruises all over the place he was still the hit of the party, but how do they manage to time these things so perfectly? Xander now wants to climb everything - chairs, couches, tables - he attempted to climb his high chair this morning while I was wiping off the tray. That of course resulted in a crash, but luckily his bottom still has lots of padding on it 
I guess we’ll just have to spot him even more closely, and I’m hoping that the newness of this climbing thing will fade soon - my head can’t afford many more gray hairs!
I was so great to see all of you on Christmas…Xander totally loved the chair! Especially when he would shake it! Take care and enjoy all the good times….
Xander looks like such a big boy in this photo! I know Emily just loves to get a big scratch before somthing important. We had to reschedule our Christmas pictures because she ran her face down the mesh on her playpen at daycare and rubbed all the skin off the end of her nose. I swear they know……