First Cardinals Game

After another successful swim class, Christian went to his first MLB game, the St. Louis Cardinals.
He had a blast!
A project team at work got a reward and were invited to the game in the company suite box.  Christian and I walked the six blocks, in the beautiful weather, to the stadium. The second we entered the suite, his energy switch flipped on.  He was so overstimualted and was having the time of his life.  I got him to sit still long enough to get a hot dog, some chips and a cookie down him.  Then we was all over the place, entertaining everyone, or at last I hope he was entertaining them and not annoying them!

He stood at the rail to see the field for a few minutes at a time and in between he was running back and forth.  The husband of the Project Manager, and also my friend, played with him alot and Christian loved it! He was laughing so hard.  Then he got comfortable and thought it would be ok to slip under the railings between the suites and go visit the neighbors. I ran around as much as his did trying to catch him before he disappeared or got into trouble.  A couple of guys told me that he was welcome to run around in their box.....that spelled trouble.  He was running from one end of the suite, out the balcony door, down two steps to the outside railing to watch the game for a few minutes....rinse...repeat.  He was doing ok but slowly picked up his speed which made him not as stable and coordinated. I saw an accident coming soon.

I stopped him mid stride, pulled him aside and explained to him that he needed to slow down and stop running down the stairs. I explained to him that if he fell, he would hit is head on the concrete ledge and get hurt really bad. He said,  "ok" and walked off instead of running, so I thought we were ok. Wrong.  The last few steps he ran, caught his toe on the top step, fell face forward, belly down and smacked his face into the concrete ledge. It was like slow motion to me and a bloody mouth with missing teeth flashed through my mind.  A man that was sitting on the top step, instantly picked him up and I was right there to take him. I rushed inside, looked at his mouth and saw blood and went to the back of the suite to inspect the damage.  He was screaming (as I would have been) and I managed to see that he had biten his bottom lip pretty bad, but no broken teeth, thank God!  My friend and another female guest were right there, handing me napkins and ice to put on it, but Christian fought that. Eventually he calmed down enough for us to get some ice on it for a minute or so and then we wanted down to run and play again.  Amazing!  I was shaken up but tried to remain calm and put out of my mind how much worse that fall could have been.

I've been told I am too smothering and should let him just run and play, which I have been trying to do. But I don't want him to get hurt and then this happens.  It's a delicate balance to find, wanting them to learn and be independent but at the same time anticipating those moments to intervene BEFORE the hurt happens.  It wasn't his first "owie" and won't be his last but that doesn't make it any less scary for me.

So he played some more and then started to get too rowdy and then came the not minding, being sassy which meant the naptime tired fit was going to make an appearance any minute.  And it did.  So we packed up to leave but I was so happy we got to go to the game and he did so good up until the top of the 8th inning.  The Cardinals were playing the Cubs, and managed to pull out a win at the bottom of the 9th, which we missed.  Darn! But we had a great time anyway.
~Amy