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Saturday, January 25, 2025

Li'l Adrenaline Junky

We were gathering for scriptures and prayer the other day when Phoebe decided she wanted to brush my hair for me. She was wielding a comb, however, and I was like, "No, thank you! Not with that! If you want to brush my hair you have to get a hairbrush."

She does not hold back when she uses a comb and I'm always afraid she's going to slice into my scalp. 

Anyway, she went upstairs to find a hairbrush. And it took her a while because she stopped to wash her hands and liberally apply someone else's chapstick to her face and...who even knows what else. She took forever. And when she finally came downstairs she did, in fact, have a hairbrush, but her sleeves were soaked and her face was covered in purple chapstick, so we know she was up to a few things.

Anyway, she was taking so long up there that Andrew hollered, "Phoebe! Come downstairs!"

"Okay, I'm coming!" she hollered back. And then she whimpered, "Oh, no..."

"Not like that!!" I yelped as we heard the first thud. 

Andrew and I jumped up to witness her poor little body ricochet down the staircase. Andrew got there first and threw himself across the bottom steps, broke her bumbly, tumbly fall, and caught her up in his arms. 

"THAT DID NOT HURT!" Phoebe wailed, flinging her arms around Andrew's neck and burying her face in his shoulder. 

"I'm glad you're not hurt," Andrew said. "Can I look at you?"

"NO!"

"Was that scary?"

"IT WAS NOT SCARY!" she sobbed—tears and snot everywhere.

"It's okay if it was scary," he told her. "I was scared."

"IT WAS NOT SCARY!" she repeated, stuck shrieking on hysterical mode. 

"Okay, it's fine that it wasn't scary. You don't have to be scared."

"I'M NOT!" she said, wiping her tears and snot and purple chapstick all across his shirt.

"Okay. You're not. That's what I just said. You're sure you're not hurt?"

"I AM NOT HURT! ANYWHERE!"

"Okay. Good. Let's take a minute to calm down and breathe..."

"I AM BREATHING!"

"Right. Of course you are. How silly of me."

"DADDY!"

*****

Later it was funny to us all that she knew gravity was going to get her before she actually fell.

She also reenacted her fall for us—from the relative safety of the living room floor. 

"That was actually fun!" she insisted after we finished reading scriptures (and brushing my hair). She threw herself into a sequence somersaults and log rolls while she explained, "Because I was like—oof! aah! boom! And I didn't even get hurt!"

I just hope she doesn't try to recreate the moment on the stairs!

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