Head first , the wrong way

After getting home from the Wonderful Ones brunch, I played with Sam while Aimee got Lunch ready. Sam was playing on the slide and I was trying to take some pictures/videos with my phone to get a good one to post. Sam was having a great time and started going up the slide with bare feet and walking his way up to the top and sliding down repeatedly. Aimee came out to watch for a minute so I was kinda playing with my phone and just happened to see Sam as he was climbing to the top of the slide loose his grip on the top and start falling backwards down the slide. Luckily he is flexible enough to put his head between his legs and he mostly slid down the slide that way with me, and my cat like reflexes, getting there to slow his decent and giving him a more graceful landing on the floor.

He must have been getting tired cuz he was playing not just 5 minutes later and got to the top of the slide and was laying on his stomach at the top with his feet down the slide. I just barely caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye as he went head first down the steps of the slide and my cat like reflexes were of no use to keep him from falling to the floor. I picked him up as he was screaming and Aimee came out and calmly told me "It's ok, but he has some blood on his lip and nose." I was very thankful for her calm identification and notification of this information cuz I didn't freak out.

It took a minute to get Sam to quit screaming and get him set down on the counter so I could take a look. I couldn't figure out where the blood had come from at first since it wasn't gushing and looked like it was transfer from somewhere else; he didn't have blood in his mouth or in his nostrils. I dabbed the blood away and found that it was a scrape on his nose and lip, most likely from him hitting it on the stairs on his way down. The stairs have a bit of texture on them, probably to make it less slippery when wet, and evidently make it rough on your face when coming down head first. Today , second pic, he has a bright scab that everyone is noticing and making comment on as Aimee did Library story time and errands this morning.


It was amazing to me that once he calmed down, he wanted right back up on the slide, but we put it away, had lunch, and he got a nap since he was evidently just too tired to manage not falling; I wasn't going to risk it again. It was a good lesson for him and me to learn about how he can get hurt; I won't be so quick to be so trusting of his ability to navigate a toy that may be a little out of his age range in term of safety. I figured it was only a matter of time that he would get hurt on the slide; it is taller than he is by about a foot. I just couldn't justify spending the same amount of money for a smaller slide that was only 2 feet tall so maybe waiting a little longer to get it for him would have been prudent. I felt so bad thinking that he had hurt himself so much worse than he did, I will definitely be more watchful of him in the future.