Cute? Yep. Coordinated? Well...

I suppose you might consider wearing a crash helmet to dinner "overly cautious."

However, if you were Evan, you'd probably find it very appropriate. Reassuring. Necessary, even.

Gravity is not Evan's friend. This kid falls more than anyone I've ever met. A couple of Sundays ago I decided to count how many crashes he had during the week. By Monday evening I had counted 27, and I'm pretty sure I missed a few. I stopped keeping track. Too depressing.

A typical scenario might look like this: Evan walking along a completely even and straight sidewalk, shoes tied (ie, no shoelaces over which to trip), no obstacles in his path. He's singing a little song, happy as a lark, and boom! he's sprawled flat out with scraped knees and a bloody lip.

What happened?!

I don't know why my child can't remain upright. Perhaps he is just more sensitive to the earth's rotation than are the rest of us? Maybe he's like one of those goats that collapses when it is startled? Who knows. I suspect he's just rather uncoordinated.

He's been doing this since he became mobile. He used to spend a lot of time crying, and I used to spend a lot of time worrying. Now we take it in stride. Usually he pops up and smiles and says, "I'm all right!" and goes on his merry way. He has-- astoundingly-- survived four years without a single trip to the emergency room. The other day he tried to climb a tree, which I was pretty sure would end at the hospital, but he survived even that. He's lucky he's so indestructable. A weaker individual would have broken many bones and had some nasty internal bleeding by now.

Evidently he's starting to understand that he is a danger to himself, however. Why else would he have worn his bike helmet to dinner?