After you have a kid, your life is nothing but a series of turns.

They turn your life upside down. Turn you into your mother. Turn your once very manly husband into mush. And reacquaint you with the laws of preschooler universe: “It’s mommy’s turn with the TV now. Setting the kitchen timer now for fiveeeeten minutes…”

Just last night, on New Year’s Day (or night), my four and a half year old turned from an honest, innocent, I-am-not-capable-of-anything-evil-because-my-brain-is-so-angelic into a Big Fat Liar Liar Pants on Fire. Long story short, she’d tried to climb down the head of her loft bed and fell.

BAM! 

I’d heard it from our room just next door, and Lokes had heard it in the kitchen downstairs. We’d run as though the wind carried us into our daughters’ room, to find her on all fours on the floor.

My first thought was, oh my God, she’d fallen and hit her head again. And me, being The Great Panicker, immediately grabbed my daughter’s head and examined it for bumps, all the while screeeaaming bloody murder.

“WHAT DID YOU DO? WHAT HAPPENED? DID YOU HIT YOUR HEAD? OH MY GOD, DO YOU KNOW IF WE BRING YOU TO THE HOSPITAL AGAIN FOR ANOTHER HEAD INJURY THEY’LL LOCK MOMMY AND DADDY UP???!!! DO YOU???”

“What happened, Raeven?” Daddy asks calmly.

“I don’t know,” replies our daughter, eyes darting from mom to dad to mom again.

“What do you mean you don’t know??!” Daddy loses it.

Oh, my God, she did hit her head. She can’t even remember!! I scream in my head. No bumps, which is bad.

“Where does it hurt?” I ask, not wanting to know.

“It was just a small bump, Mommy. Just a teeny one,” she rubs the back of her head.

Images of projectile vomiting and a $2,000 hospital bill flash in my head (and no doubt in my husband’s as well).

“WHAT DID YOU DO? DID YOU FALL?” I lose it.

“No…I don’t know.” She is defiantly denying everything. This goes on for a while.

“YOU TELL ME NOW OR YOU ARE SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR, YOUNG LADY!” I really lose it.

“I…don’t know.”

Oh my God, my baby is really broken. She has finally broken something in her head.

“Look, Raeven. Mommy is not going to scold you, and neither will Daddy. Please, please, just tell us what happened.”

Skyler sits in a corner, sucking her binky, blinking at the commotion.

Raeven swallows a gulp of saliva, and replies, “Okay…I was doing my trick.”

Trick? What trick?

“Trick? What trick?” asks Daddy.

“Just my…bed trick.”

“Show us,” I try very hard to keep my promise.

“No, I don’t remember,” she whines, about to cry.

“Show us now or you are sleeping on the floor, WITH NO PILLOW!” I am failing miserably.

“Aaawwww,” she is clearly unhappy about divulging her little ‘trick’.

What happens next almost gives me a heart attack. My four year old, who won’t even attempt the monkey bars in a park, climbs up her loft bed (which is a good six feet above the floor), goes to the head of the bed, straddles it, swings her other leg over, hangs on with her hands and her tummy, dangles her feet over nothing and then lets go.

BAM!

There it was.

All hell breaks loose.

“HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU DONE THIS?”

“Not many,” Raeven cries.

“You tell me the truth right now, I can see you’ve done this a LOT OF TIMES!” I am out of my mind.

“You mean today?” she asks innocently, rubbing her hands, her nervous tick.

 

Suffice to say, we made her promise on her life never to do the ‘trick’ again. While I was wondering how we could trust her, Lokes goes out and brings back Skyler’s powder puff. With Rae in bed and out of sight, he dusts part of the bed right under the head, which she’d used to leverage herself, with talcum powder.

“We need a camera in here,” he mumbles.

And so it begins.

 

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