Boats & gravity

Isaac found their old infant bathtub in my bedroom yesterday. I had loaned it to a friend who had given it back, and I hadn't yet put it away. The sight of the tub caused great excitement as Isaac pushed it out of our room and down the hallway yelling: "BOAT! BOAT!" I guess it did look kinda like a boat now that I thought about it.

They played with the boat for quite awhile. Loading things into it and climbing in and out of it. I got a good chuckle as Elijah tried to negotiate climbing into the boat. He wanted to do it standing up but he just couldn't hike his leg high enough to get over the edge. So he ultimately got on his hands and knees to make his entrance into the boat.

The problem is, the boat can be turned upside down. And Elijah can now climb on things that are on an appropriate height. He is nearly able to get onto the couch now. This scares me though. Elijah currently has no idea how to get down off of things. He often falls face first in his attempt to defy gravity. We have tried to teach him "feet first" but he is not showing signs of understanding this, at least not as rapidly as we would like him to understand.

An example is illustrated nearly perfectly by the pictures below. I found Elijah standing on the bottom of the "boat" and grabbed my camera.



Just as I snapped picture one (above), JB said to me: "I'm not sure that is a good idea." I agreed with him and snapped the camera one more time as I stood up, preparing to remove Elijah from the boat. However, that last picture caught the moment that Elijah fell:


It's hard to see from this photo, but this fall is actually going to be much worse than it initially appears. Elijah's left foot is not firmly planted and is going to roll and he is going to get up sobbing and limping. He was okay, but he did look up at me as if to say: Why were you taking a picture and not catching me.

Sorry Elijah boy.