Suicide Watch

I read a funny quote one day that compared being the parent of a toddler to a 24 hour suicide watch. I laughed out loud because of the truth in that statement. There is something magnificent about 18 months old. They know so much and absorb everything. They want to explore, repeat, and entertain. They also want to climb to the highest places in the house and then look around, unbalanced, to make sure someone is seeing how tall they feel at that moment. My son is going to give me a heart attack like his brother and sister before him did. I want him to explore and be proud of himself for doing new things but can't help but picture all the scenarios that can come out of that. Being the 3rd child, he gets away with a lot more than Ella and William did. I watched Ella like a hawk. I pretty much knew how every fall or scrape happened. With William, I knew at least 75% of his scrapes because he was a calmer child and Ella had moved beyond the "danger" phase at that point. I maybe catch 35% of what happens with Luke. I'm usually relying on the witnesses (ie. Ella and William) to tell me what happened. It's more like an interrogation because there are many sides to the story and of course, they had "absolutely nothing to do with it". A great friend told me something recently that stuck in my head. She said we needed to remember to "parent" our third child. We forget to explain why the answer is no or why they can't keep climbing on a bar stool. We say no and that it's dangerous but don't continue on like we did with the first or second. We forget that we need to repeat over and over why it's dangerous and what could happen if they keep doing it so one day they will understand. What keeps me going...18 months is an exhausting age but I try every day to absorb who he is at this moment in an effort to always remember how insanely cute he is right now.