Professor Papa - Part 3

This is another instance of taking a good thing, and using it in the wrong fashion.

On vacation we had a bit of extra time to kill between bath and bed time.  Mama was tending to Brynne, so Hadley and I were playing in their room.  We were on the bed reading one of their sign language books.  I turned the page to the next sign, which was jump.

She then jumped.  Okay, so she didn't jump like this, but she clearly made the attempt.  With the extra spring in her step provided by the bed she was able to put some air between her feet and the bed. 

It caught me off guard.  I know that she knows the signs for the words in the books, but I didn't realize she knew what the words meant.  Granted, I was helping show her how to jump (as best I could from a kneeling position), but she took right to it.

She was laughing and smiling - obviously as proud of herself as I was. 

Brynne came in (attracted by the squealing of Hadley), climbed on the bed, and proceeded to do exactly the same thing.

The next day we worked on jumping off the ground.  Without the bed springs to supply some much needed lift they were only able to "jump" to their tip toes.  Since then they have been able to get a little lift, so I'm calling that success. 

In my opinion, even if you can barely put a sheet of paper between their feet and the ground it is still a jump.   Once we get a little basketball hoop for them we'll work on layups and dunking, but for now we'll stick with increasing their vertical.

I guess I am partly (or fully) to blame for their jumping on the wrong things.  I am the one who introduced them to jumping on the bed.  They, however, did start jumping on couches, chairs, and in cribs.

It's gotten to the point where if they are on the couch (where they know they are not to stand up) they will stand, jump, and then land/fall on their butts - laughing madly the whole time.

My two concerns are: 

1 - jumping over the back of the couch or off the sides/front

2 - landing on their butts from a jump on a hard surface.

The first one is higher on the danger scale than the second as they don't have as far to go, but it is still a concern.



Obviously it will be a long time before they do something which puts them way up on the danger scale, but even these small falls can do damage.



I'll just have to deal with it, though. Can't keep my girls in a bubble.