Emergency Bath
Lately I've been trying to bend my work schedule so that I watch Birdie on Tuesday and Friday mornings so that M can go play some pickleball. Last Tuesday I took Birdie to the Bay Village Nature Center, which led to an emergency bath!
Birdie spent a lot of additional time at the Bay Village Nature Center in December and January because M took her to their "Nature School" program for a few weeks to try it out. M decided that it wasn't worth the money, but the nature center itself is still lots of fun, and since Birdie hadn't been there for a few weeks I took her there on a clear but cool day.
After some time spent playing with puzzles and messing with their interactive shipwreck screen, Birdie decided it was time to go outside to where their collection of rehabbing and "too injured to survive in the wild" animals live. She didn't have much interest in the animals, but there is a nice pond outside the nature center with a little bridge that is perfect for plopping.
This bridge has no railing, and not being a complete fool I stood very close to her as she went on the bridge to plop a rock in the water. She then ran about 20 feet away to retrieve a rock and returned to the bridge. This repeated many, many times over the next 20 minutes, and she had no problem with the bridge or her footing, even when other kids her age joined in.
You can obviously see where this is going. Since she ran back and forth successfully so many times in a row over a long (for a toddler) period of time, I started worrying less about being right next to her when she was on the bridge. Naturally, she finally misjudged her step when she threw the rock and toppled off the bridge into the pod. She landed more or less horizontally in a few inches of cold muddy water. She was quite displeased.
I pulled Birdie up by the back of her jacket and two minutes later I'd stripped off her shoes and jacket and wrapped her in a blanket for the drive back home. 20 minutes later she was in the bathtub for an unscheduled emergency bath. I think that was actually the first bath I gave Birdie where M wasn't present.
One bath later, her laundry was rolling and it was now a funny story that Birdie was happy to relate to M when she got home from the gym.
Given my daughter's recurring interest in people jumping in water, it was probably only a matter of time before this happened. It could be worse though. My original plan for the day was to swing by the newly reopened Bradstreet Landing in Rocky River. If she'd someone managed to fall off a six hundred foot fishing pier into Lake Erie that would have been a real problem!
Birdie spent a lot of additional time at the Bay Village Nature Center in December and January because M took her to their "Nature School" program for a few weeks to try it out. M decided that it wasn't worth the money, but the nature center itself is still lots of fun, and since Birdie hadn't been there for a few weeks I took her there on a clear but cool day.
After some time spent playing with puzzles and messing with their interactive shipwreck screen, Birdie decided it was time to go outside to where their collection of rehabbing and "too injured to survive in the wild" animals live. She didn't have much interest in the animals, but there is a nice pond outside the nature center with a little bridge that is perfect for plopping.
This bridge has no railing, and not being a complete fool I stood very close to her as she went on the bridge to plop a rock in the water. She then ran about 20 feet away to retrieve a rock and returned to the bridge. This repeated many, many times over the next 20 minutes, and she had no problem with the bridge or her footing, even when other kids her age joined in.
You can obviously see where this is going. Since she ran back and forth successfully so many times in a row over a long (for a toddler) period of time, I started worrying less about being right next to her when she was on the bridge. Naturally, she finally misjudged her step when she threw the rock and toppled off the bridge into the pod. She landed more or less horizontally in a few inches of cold muddy water. She was quite displeased.
I pulled Birdie up by the back of her jacket and two minutes later I'd stripped off her shoes and jacket and wrapped her in a blanket for the drive back home. 20 minutes later she was in the bathtub for an unscheduled emergency bath. I think that was actually the first bath I gave Birdie where M wasn't present.
One bath later, her laundry was rolling and it was now a funny story that Birdie was happy to relate to M when she got home from the gym.
Given my daughter's recurring interest in people jumping in water, it was probably only a matter of time before this happened. It could be worse though. My original plan for the day was to swing by the newly reopened Bradstreet Landing in Rocky River. If she'd someone managed to fall off a six hundred foot fishing pier into Lake Erie that would have been a real problem!