On Raising Grace-challenged Daughters

Clumsiness is a rather aggressive gene in my family. It runs rampant in the women on my mother’s side.

It’s unfortunate that I seem to have passed this gene on to my girls. Ashton can navigate a cluttered room, jump over a basket of laundry, do a kick-flip off the side of the couch and land it without a scratch. Poor Chloe, however, cannot so much as walk across a flat surface without tripping over her own pigeon-toed feet (which also runs in my family).

I myself, cannot walk through a room without getting injured somehow. Most of the time I realize I have bruises with no memory of how they got there. Growing up I was always gangly and knobbly-knee’d. Unfortunately I haven’t outgrown the “gorilla arms” of my adolescence, inviting even more accidents- my elbows and hands are my most commonly injured appendages. I like to think that I’m “endearingly clumsy”. True, Jeremy does often call me a klutz, but it seems to be said more out of exasperation than affection.

And now it seems as though Atleigh has inherited the Klutz Gene just as strongly. At first, I attributed it to her young age, her “toddlerhood”. Then, I thought maybe she had a cold, affecting her balance. But after having witnessed her fall out of a shopping cart, off the couch, out of the SAME folding chair four times, slam the toilet lid on her fingers, drop a toolbox full of Matchbox cars on her foot, poke herself in the eye with a hairbrush, step on HER OWN fingers, and pull a shelf-full of books down on herself, all within the last 24 hours, I have been forced to accept that she too, will live life with the ability to find an injury-inducing corner in a round room.

I guess the only thing I can do is prepare her for a lifetime of bruised shins and tingling funny bones, and teach her the proper way to hiss “SHhhhhh-OOT” under her breath when there are children around.