This past week saw some firsts for Angus - although I'm not so sure I want to put them in his baby book (not that I have been very diligent with that).
I like to think that there are some aspects of my parenting that are fairly relaxed. I believe in letting kids explore the world around them, within reason of course. Someone asked recently if I was worried about Angus now he is walking (around furniture and so on) and I responded that no, I wasn't. He needed to learn that if he walks under the table, he will bang his head. Or that if he climbs up on the (little) stool and falls, that can hurt too. And these little bumps are ok, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again. Of course I watch closely if he is exploring things up high. And going to our local park at the moment leaves me in conniptions. He likes to climb up the stairs, then poke his head out of one of the 3 openings, then run across to the slide where he launches himself (sometimes head first) down them. He is quick too; by the time I have tried to catch him at the bottom of the slide he has run back to the steps to do it all again.
So I really should have been prepared for his first bleeding nose. Angus had climbed up the garden stairs and was standing at the top. I usually try to stop him doing this, but today I thought I'd let him play for a minute before I went to get him. I literally was standing next to him when he did a faceplant into the garden bed. Although when I picked him up I think I got the bigger fright to see that blood! Thankfully it wasn't much, and it stopped after a few minutes.
Another first this week is not something I am relaxed or proud about. I am fairly diligent about keeping things like chemicals and medicines locked away. This week though I was a teensy bit distracted while folding washing, and walked out of the laundry knowing Angus was in there (and not shutting the baby gate). I came back in to see him chewing something - cat food I thought - but a quick check showed a mouthful of (shudder) cat litter. sigh. I had a moment where I went "should I worry about this, or just pretend it never happened". I did the responsible thing and called the poisons information line.
The lady on the other end of the phone was lovely. After confirming what brand it was (for the record Coles, and the silica one) she commented that "that wasn't one she had had in a while" and that he would be fine. Which left me thinking two things: 1. why isn't the coles brand that popular? and 2. My child is not the first to have eaten cat litter. A quick poll on facebook (because of course I had to publicly highlight my due diligence as a parent) and cat litter is by far the tamest thing other children have eaten.
So I can't find a spot in the baby book to write these milestones up. Hopefully we won't have too many more bleeding noses, but I know we will. And it is nice to know the poisons line is there, but I won't add it to speed dial just yet.
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