I do not have a gentle child.

He loves to crawl and bang into things and beat his palms on the floor (or on me).  He loves to grab and yank and drop and yell.  He burps and passes gas and laughs at me when I say, “No”.

I’m serious – if I say “no”, Joseph gets a great big grin on his face and bursts into giggles.  It’s all a game to him.  One great, big game of discover and wonder.

Until, of course, he bangs into something a little too hard.

Suddenly, all that “fun” isn’t fun anymore.  It’s tears and sadness and “what happened?!”

In this case, “what happened” was the wire popping through Joe’s pop-up nylon laundry bin, which just so happens to be in the shape of a giant ducky.  I was folding cloth nappies in the nursery with Joe toodling around nearby.  He attacked the ducky bin, and the bin bit him.  Thoughts of sending that ducky sailing through the air out of our window and into the fountain in the courtyard below raced through my mind as I kissed his poor, injured face.

Of course, within 2 minutes of Joe’s “duck bite” he was off again, tearing around corners and bumping into walls with that mercifully hard head of his.

Babies are sweet, but thankfully they come in sturdy little packages 🙂