My child is a lunatic. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

 

Okay, so he’s not a lunatic; he’s a toddler. But when you take as few physical risks as I do, “toddler” and “raving lunatic” look like the same thing.

 

For those of you who don’t know me personally, let me give you a little taste of how I roll. On our honeymoon, John and I signed up to ride ATVs around Kauai both to see the island’s beauty and to go fast on cool vehicles. (Can you guess who registered us for this?) Once I confirmed that if I were to drive my own vehicle, I would certainly perish before day’s end, I hopped on the back of John’s. I thought we were racing through the course, but every time I looked at the speedometer, do you know what I saw? Thirteen. We were going thirteen miles per hour.

 

The thing is, I know I did my part to bring on this monkey thing. Jacob loves to wash his hands these days, but since I’m on the shorter side, it’s difficult for me to hold him up long enough for him to finish washing. Maybe if he could wash just once, this wouldn’t be a problem. But playing in the water is way too much fun right now, so I got him a stool. He’d used one at his grandma’s house, and I figured it would help.

 

The good news? He loves it.

The bad news? He loves it. It’s a license to climb. Everything.

 

The day after we got the stool, Jacob learned to climb from the kneeler on to the pew at church. Climbing things like stairs, the couch, and chairs is not new. Lately Jacob has been basking in the novelty of sitting on every horizontal surface in our home. But with the introduction of the stool, the old boundaries vanished. Later that day, he successfully pulled himself on to a low bench at the park. The joy of sitting quickly wore off and, like at church, he suddenly had a desire to stand on whatever he could climb on. I don’t blame him. Honestly, I stood on his stool to floss the other night, and it was awesome. Who doesn’t like being a little bit taller?

 

But higher up means farther to fall, and I’m about to lose my mind with the “you may not”s and the “do you know how dangerous that is?”s.

If he weren’t so cute, we might have a real problem.