When Maddie was born, I remember thinking about how her entire tiny body was completely new\u2014exposed to the air and the elements for the very first time when she emerged into our world.<\/p>\n

The skin on her back was impossibly smooth, and her hands and feet were impossibly wrinkled. The bottom of her feet in particular contained unending rivulets and creases unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen before. I often joked that she had just been taken out of her package and things were still wrinkled from being all folded up and unused, like when you first unpack a button-down dress shirt and have to iron it or throw it in the dryer to remove the deep folds of confinement.<\/p>\n

Now that Maddie is becoming increasingly mobile and increasingly curious, we helpless parents have found ourselves readying ourselves for the inevitable scratches, bruises and scares<\/span>^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> that will come with toddler life.<\/p>\n}

Even though Maddie is still refusing to crawl\u2014settling to work and play with whatever is within arm\u2019s reach rather than pushing herself to get that ball that rolled a few inches away from her\u2014she\u2019s already getting herself in trouble and putting some wear and tear on her once unmarked and pristine being.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago, Theresa and Maddie were in Cincinnati visiting one of Theresa\u2019s cousins, when I received a text from Theresa instructing me not to freak out, but\u2026something had happened to Maddie. She was sitting on a chair and Theresa had turned away for a crucial moment. It was enough time for Maddie to dive bomb off the chair and face plant on the carpet below. Her head was fine and she was just a little shaken up by the experience, but a tell-tale rug burn on and below her nose made her look like she had suffered some major abuse for the next few days\u2014just in time for us to visit Theresa\u2019s family in southern Indiana and get questions from everyone who encountered her.<\/p>\n

While scary, we were fortunate that Maddie landed on carpet and suffered no longterm effects. This being our first child, I am definitely living up to the cliche that I think I can protect Maddie from anything and that any failure on that front is worthy of instant and long-lasting guilt. I know this isn\u2019t the case, but it\u2019s hard to shake the feeling when Maddie is so little and cute and helpless. Unfortunately, little and cute and helpless can be dangerous when combined with increased mobility and the need to have<\/em> everything and also put everything in your mouth.<\/p>\n

A couple days ago, Maddie was sitting on the living room rug and playing with her toys like she does for hours throughout the week. Theresa and I both left the room for a minute\u2014literally 60 seconds\u2014and returned to find Maddie gagging on something. Both of our hearts raced as we tried to figure out what she possibly could have swallowed, when there was seemingly nothing dangerous around her. Theresa forced her fingers past Maddie\u2019s teeth, anxiously searching the back of her mouth for the choking hazard. We were incredibly lucky that Theresa was able to locate the tiny strip of a water bottle wrapper that was still in her mouth and causing a gag reflex. I have no idea where it came from or how Maddie got it.<\/span>^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> But the lesson is that we can\u2019t afford to look away or leave her alone for a second these days.<\/p>\n}

A few days ago, Theresa called me at work, so I knew something was up. Sure enough, there had been another Maddie incident. This time, she moved her hands when Theresa was attempting to trim her finger nails, and earned a small, bleeding gash on the tip of her finger. She got over it really quickly and was laughing at the band-aid on her finger, but soon the band-aid proved it would just eventually become another choking hazard, since Maddie simply HAD to try to put it in her mouth. <\/span>^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n}

We are fortunate that Maddie\u2019s late-bloomer status in terms of movement means that we haven\u2019t had as many incidents as we could have had by now\u2014and no doubt will in the future. That said, we also haven\u2019t done any child-proofing around the house yet<\/span>^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, so now that process is moving to the top of our agenda. We need to lower her crib so she can\u2019t fall over the railing. We need to vacuum more frequently so she doesn\u2019t become our own little Roomba. We need to remove any objects that will fall apart into smaller pieces at the mercy of her drenching drool and razor-sharp bite.<\/p>\n}

Before she can even move around that much, Maddie has already become a little daredevil, and keeping her safe has become a full-time job. Right now, preventing her from getting hurt consists of making sure she doesn\u2019t eat that tiny piece of leaf that she found on the kitchen floor. I\u2019m well aware of the fact that our current efforts at protecting her from physical harm will seem like a piece of cake when the threats to her well-being take on emotional, social and psychological forms.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll have to think about those deep issues some other time. For now, Maddie just got really quiet and is staring at her hand, which probably means she found something that she\u2019s not supposed to eat\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that our daughter is becoming more mobile and curious, keeping her safe is becoming a difficult and necessary full-time job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[41,69],"tags":[9,50,104,4,11,23,5,72,58,28,49,3,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n