Hair-Raising!

A friend just lent me the book, "The Hair-Raising Joys of Raising Boys" by Dave Meurer, which it supposed to be quite funny. I haven't started it yet, but will need to soon in order to help myself see the humor in the hair-raising stunt Toby pulled today:

I have already mentioned on this blog that he loves to climb...

We were just leaving his gymnastics class at the community center this afternoon. Toby ran ahead of me when Teacher Brian, his instructor, began talking to me about the possibility of moving Toby up to the next level. I was hoping Toby would realize that I had not followed him out of the building and come running back. I continued the conversation, but really should of excused myself to call Toby back. Sure enough, a few moments later a man came in the door and asked if I was the mother of a boy with a green shirt on (I'm surprised he didn't say the boy with the red hair!). Outside of the building there is a brick wall with ledges every few feet all the way up to the top, and apparently Toby had climbed it. I went out to see and passed one mother, who said excitedly, "He is all the way to the top!" Yes, he was as far up as you can go. A nanny with a little girl in a stroller said to me, "He really likes to climb doesn't he?" I responded, "Yes, he does," through clenched teeth. I was not happy.

It was easy to help Toby get down. Hands first, then feet, now hands, now feet. He was down in seconds and was probably never in real danger since he is pretty agile, but it was still disconcerting that he would attempt a climb like that without a parent in sight! The same man that had alerted me of my son's actions came back out and said something about Spiderman, which I told him was Toby's middle name.

When I asked him later why that was a "sad choice" - our term for misbehavior - he knew exactly: because I climbed too high and could of fallen and because my mommy and daddy weren't there. Sigh. Why do I have the feeling there are many more hair-raising days to come?