Mama the Jedi Ninja

I know that Jedis and ninjas are different, but I wasn't sure which applied here...

You ever have those moments when you can see something happening in slow motion and feel like you could do something to stop it but just sit there and watch it happen instead? I remember once at a restaurant I watched a waitress put a pint of beer on the table beside me but only get the glass half on the table. I swear it felt like I had about 10 minutes to nonchalantly reach over and catch the glass (and beer) mid-air as it fell to the ground. Instead, I just sat there and watched it fall and shatter and puddle.

Not so now that I'm a mom! One day recently, Harrison was playing at the table and stools in the kitchen that he loves and that have always made me nervous with him (for good reason!). The table is a metal workbench that was probably meant for a garage -- it has a steel top about chest-high and a little shelf about ankle-high. Harrison loves to stand on the low shelf and peek out the window to keep tabs on the activity out back. This day, he was standing on the shelf and looking at us in the kitchen. He got ahold of one of the stools (they're all three-legged, so not as stable as four-legged ones) and somehow stepped off the shelf like he thought it hadn't ended yet, which means that he was falling off the shelf and pulling the stool down with him. Chris says that what happened next was amazing to watch, but to me it felt like I just strolled over to Harrison, caught his head in my right hand and the stool in my left hand, laid him on the ground with my hand as a cushion, and kept the stool from crashing down onto him.

How did I do that??? Only Jedi Ninja Mamas know, and we can't explain it. Don't mess with Jedi Ninja Mamas.

Next day update

Harrison and I went to the grocery the day I wrote this post. Since we didn't have much to get, I just grabbed a basket and planned on having him walk beside me or be carried. When we were in the produce section, Harrison was busily inspecting his baby-sized bananas while he walked towards me. I thought I was serving as a good "don't drive your cart through here" blocker for him (because he's little and tough to see and all and I figured that surely people would steer far enough around me to avoid him, too), but suddenly a cart came charging up from behind me and was just about to have a head-on collision with Harrison! Jedi Ninja Mama that I am, I calmly put out my right hand, grabbed the rogue cart, and stopped it inches from the little buddy's forehead. He flinched a bit and then went around the cart to show me where he had bitten through one of the baby bananas. The lady driving the cart had a baby in an infant carseat sitting on the top of it, which makes for a huge blindspot (I hated driving with Harrison's carseat on the cart like that!). She was all flustered, but no harm done!