Snips and Snails and Puppydog Tails

The game room upstairs is the Land of All Things Lego, the big boys’ domain. Until recently. We’ve been doing some household clean out, and that included the upstairs game room. (Never fear, the Legos are still around, just put away differently.) I’ve mentioned that we’re sort of a sports family, right? Well, no sports family upstairs game room is complete without a basketball goal, right? Clearly. Sam (thankfully) seems to have inherited his father’s athleticism thus far, and is ENAMOURED of anything that involves sports, especially basketball. No, really, this child would throw a fit at big brothers’ basketball games (at 8-9 months old!) when the ball was taken away from him at warmups or halftime. Imagine his glee when he was finally allowed into the game room and realized he has his very own goal right upstairs! It even has a place for not one, but TWO balls to sit safely at the base of the goal! SCORE!

Sam has also started going up and down the stairs, with help from Mommy and Daddy, of course. He thinks it’s the greatest thing ever to crawl up the stairs for bedtime or, of course, basketball time. Can you guess where I’m going with this? Can you?

Bad Mommy Moment number – oh, we’re surely in the millions by now, right? Anyway, it’s Thursday morning; I’m making a sandwich for Daddy and putting together our lunch bag.  Sam is floating between watching Jack’s Big Music Show, supervising me in the kitchen, and peeking out the dining room window, chattering away to the kids walking to school. As I put the lunch bag in the fridge, I realize it’s quiet…too quiet. (Yes, yes, I know, shake your heads at me.) “Sam? What are you doing, baby?” I call, as I take the 6 steps from fridge to dining room. He’s not in the dining room…

Yep, you guessed it, he’s just short of half-way up the stairs. I bound up the steps ready to give him what-for about going upstairs without Mommy, when I notice that he has something in his hands…BOTH balls from the upstairs hoop. That’s right, folks. He wasn’t heading UP the stairs; he was on his way BACK DOWN the stairs. WITH HIS HANDS FULL. Mother of the year, right here.

Now, I learned about, oh, 16 months ago that motherhood is full of multiple emotions happening allattheexactsametime. This was no different. I was terrified that he’d gone All.The.Way.Upstairs, gotten his two balls (quiet down, peanut gallery) and was more than halfway back down before I caught him. I was more than a little impressed that he was doing it “the right way” (crawling backwards down the stairs, feet and butt first), when he really hasn’t been doing stairs for that long. I was incredibly thankful that he didn’t trip, fall, slip, or find some other way to meet his demise on the evil, evil stairs. And, of course, I immediately had Mommy Guilt that he got away from me like that.

So, what’s a Mom to do with all this going through her head in about three nano-seconds? What else? I helped him the rest of the way down the stairs (yes, I let him finish what he started), gave him a stern talking-to about not going up or down the stairs without Mommy or Daddy, and then kept him safely shut in the bedroom with me until it was time to walk out the door. Oh, and I also had to text Daddy to tell him what “his” sneaky son had done. (Daddy was less than thrilled.) Judge if you want, but I’m actually a little proud that I didn’t totally freak out and start yelling when I discovered him. So, Mommies out there reading this, tell me how you’d have handled it?