Contraptions

The Final Addition is not yet walking, but the little bruiser can still get around without much difficulty.

He is fast, even if his travels all come in four-legged form.

He has even taken to climbing the stairs, with reckless abandon too, often dangling perilously from a top step by the time we realize he is no longer sitting by the toy chest—where he sat just a second ago!!!—slobbering all over Topless Amputee Barbie™.

That he doesn’t discriminate against one-legged naked dolls is cause for celebration, I guess, but that he can so quickly disappear from sight is cause for concern.

To impede his climbing ability, I took to sliding a piece of plywood across the first step, as a sort-of stop-gap measure to keep him from stumbling all the way down to the hardwood floor if he missed a step.


I thought I had him beat, but within a day-or-two, he was pulling himself over that piece of plywood with all the grace of Police Academy’s Cadet Laverne Hooks when she finally scales the cumbersome wall in the Academy’s mandatory obstacle course.

Not pretty, but effective.

The first time I watched him do it, I half-expected him to turn around and give me the finger.

He is that determined.

So I outfoxed him, and upgraded the plywood to a more sturdy, more robust, and to him, far more challenging barrier, over which he has not yet managed to pull himself.


Sorry kid. You may as well learn now that life isn’t fair, and that in a battle of Dad versus Boy, your old man will win every time.

Kind of.

Because unbeknownst to him, The Final Addition got some retribution.

With the brood all tucked in comfortably for the night, Hot Wife and I took to the basement to indulge in some mindless reality television, only to be interrupted a half-hour later by a thunderous thud from two floors up, followed by screams and cries that made it clear that one of The Daughters had fallen out of bed.

Like any good father, I rushed up from the basement two-steps at a time, hoping to console what turned out to be a startled but hardly scarred Daughter Formerly Known as The Latest Addition, before she could wake her sleeping brother one room over.

Turning the corner on the main floor, I wrapped my hand around the banister and slingshot my way towards the upper stairs, intent on playing the hero for my little girl, when—DAMN-SH!T-F**K-SCREW—I drove my sprinting knee right into the wooden barrier that I forgot to remove after The Final Addition went to bed, and that I couldn’t see with all the lights turned out.

MOTHERF***ER!

Winded and wounded, I limped my way up to The Daughter Formerly Known as The Latest Addition, while behind me I could hear Hot Wife hooting and hollering at my misfortune.

She is all pity, that one.

In any case, I did take some solace from my scraped knee.

If my contraption is solid enough to bring a grown man to his knees, then surely we should have no more worries about The Final Addition climbing the stairs.