The older young Jimmy gets, the more adventurous he becomes and all the more BOY is his personality! I am used to a dainty little girl who likes glitter and sparkles, dressing up, sitting and playing with dollies or calmly watching television. I am used to a girl who of course has lots of energy but who projects it in an entirely girlie way! Florence will sit to have her nails or face painted for as long as it takes and has done since she was around her brother’s age! She has never, to my recollection, butted something with her head just for fun!
I didn’t encourage all this pink and sparkles. I don’t try and discourage it either mind but I certainly didn’t buy her gender specific toys to begin with; I didn’t even dress her in pink girlie clothes as a baby. Really! And the same with Jimmy. I haven’t given him boy toys or dressed him in clothes with diggers on the front but just as his sister was attracted to Princesses and fairies he is naturally interested in wheels and footballs! If anything, he was surrounded by ‘girls toys’ because of Florence but he’s really not interested in the fluff and fancy! Give him a truck and he’s well away!
‘BOY’ is just what Jimmy is all about and it’s all new to me but I’m learning. He will be one of those lads at school who throws the hood of his coat on his head and runs around the play ground with it flapping out behind him like a cape. He will be the boy who breaks a window by lobbing (he does lob rather than throw) balls without looking which direction they’re going in and he will DEFINITELY be the boy with mud all down his clothes every single day!
Where Florence likes to sit and stick with glitter and shiny paper or spend hours setting up Happyland villages before play acting well thought out story lines, Jimmy is tearing paper up and shredding it all over the house before stomping all over the HappyLand houses whilst lunging for the cars!
You’ll see Florence happily sit on the sofa with her iPod or skip down the road beside me when we’re out and about. Jimmy throws himself off the sofa at home and when allowed to get out of the buggy on a walk he hurls himself full throttle down the path without looking where he’s going!
Jimmy has a permanent bruise on his head. His knees are always scuffed and dotted with marks. I think Florence has only ever had the odd grazed knee… He’s tough though, he very rarely cries and just get’s up, rubs his head, says ‘ow’ before moving on to the next hard item he wants to head butt! He hurls, literally hurls himself at things or off things or on things. Things like the wall or the coffee table… He’s had so many nose bleeds I couldn’t even count. I’ve long thought it very lucky that we have avoided A&E thus far!
Until yesterday…
Yesterday Jimmy was on a bouncy castle. All the other little ones were strapped in their buggies while their older siblings bounced. Jimmy wanted to go on so badly though that I had to let him and with all the big kids went my tiny tot bouncing higher and higher, giggling as he was shunted up and down by the weight of the older ones! The bouncy castle, which was at the local church fete, was situated at the top of a grassy slope about 3 ft high. At the bottom, a concrete floored car park… Can you guess what happened?
First of all he flung himself off the bouncy castle. He liked that so did it a few more times and then… He ran, as fast as he could (which is fast by the way) down the steep slope. He got nearly to the bottom with me behind him in what felt like slow motion shouting ‘NO, NO, NO!’
Jimmy nearly managed his usual trick of full recovery but yesterday he came unstuck and just before the bottom he went over. Right down on to the concrete with the force of his downward hill run behind him. First his body and then as his head bounced backwards with the fall it then bounced forward again and THWACK! Straight on to the hard concrete floor…
Oh my poor boy. Everyone heard it, it was very loud and before I knew it he was screaming in my arms and someone had called an ambulance. After a few minutes I instinctively knew he would be ok but we were happy to go and get checked out at the hospital. A little mild concussion did not stop Jimmy running up and down the monitoring ward, bouncing off each wall as he got to the edge and it didn’t stop him hanging like a monkey off the sinks, nurses station and chairs either. He banged his head at least three times while we waited to see the Dr who sent us home with advice and signs to look out for…
I hope we won’t have to go to A&E for any more boy related injuries in the future but I have to say… I suspect we might…
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