Bounce Back

My daughter is three. And bless her little heart, she's the clumsiest three-year old I've ever seen. She never looks where she's going, she puts all of her 33 pounds into everything she does, and she always picks shoes that don't have any grip. So she's constantly running into things, falling over, and sliding into stuff. We've tried to slow her down and protect her, but it's no use. At this point anything short of a helmet and tiny little body armor would be useless. (Side note: I'm definitely gonna look into developing tiny little body armor for toddlers because it sounds so awesome!)

Just in the past two weeks she's fallen off of a non-moving bicycle, run face-first into a couch (a couch, mind you, that is always in the same spot), and fallen out of her bed in the middle of the night three times. I think "accident prone" might be an understatement. But the good news is that she always bounces back rather quickly. She cries if it hurts, but forgets in a few minutes. She forgets so quickly, in fact, that she's always asking us where her scrapes and bruises came from.

I was very different as a child. I didn't fall very often and I had incredible balance for my size. My problem was that if I did happen to fall or hit something, I hurt myself considerably. I broke my hand on a recliner once.  And I tore ligaments in my ankle on a simple layup in school.  So I was fragile. And seeing the difference between clumsy and fragile, I'm glad she's the former instead of the latter. Although the scrapes and bruises bring up awkward questions from people who don't know her. You'd be surprised how many strangers are comfortable asking where my daughter got her minor injuries. (My answer is usually just to point at my son, who smiles sheepishly right on cue.)