I Am the Scaffolding

Yesterday, I woke up with a headache.  The achy, throbbing sort that makes one sick to one's stomach sometimes.  How thankful I am that Daddy's job allows him to work from home when he chooses.  He was able to take Munch, who had of course woken at her usual, atrociously early hour of 7am (I will never be a willing morning person).  I took some ibuprofin and proceeded to sleep more or less soundly for the next 40 minutes or so, but was still headachy into the afternoon. 

Why do I mention something like this?  Because of what I believe is the cause of the headache.  As of Monday, I am now officially the Munch's walking scaffolding.  She's gotten very good at grabbing my pant leg, pulling herself up to a standing position, locating and grabbing my hands, and taking off across the floor, without so much as a 'by your leave.'  She absolutely loves it, and absolutely insists on it.  I spend all day doing laps with her around the house:  start in the livingroom, walk through the dining room, through the kitchen, look in on Daddy in his office, do a circle in his office and walk back through the kitchen, into the dining room, around the table a couple times, into our bedroom and out again and back to the livingroom...over and over and over, and at a pretty good clip too.  If I grow weary of this and close the gate to keep us in the livingroom, she'll take me on laps in there...but first she'll throw a (slightly cute) little one-year-old tantrum when she reaches the gate and I refuse to open it.  Thankfully, Munch is tall enough and I am short enough that I don't have to lean over as she walks.  So my back doesn't get sore or knotted, but my shoulders definitely do, since they're the ones that hold up much of her weight.  Tight shoulders equals tight neck equals headache, and there you have it...My latest headaches are Munch's fault.  But conversely, I can probably blame much of my recent weight loss on her too...She's certainly gotten me up from this chair a lot more lately!

I don't mind being her scaffolding.  In many ways, that's what parenting is anyway--a structure of support for a child to lean on and learn from as they grow into the people God has planned for them to be.  I pray that I will be able to be the sturdy scaffolding she'll need in other areas of life as she gets older...but for now, I'm really just hoping she'll start walking on her own soon!  I'm not sure how much more my shoulders can take...  ;)