Indiana Jones Apparently Lives at My House

Ben is truly a fearless little boy. He walks right off the edge of a step into our step-down living room, sometimes remaining upright, sometimes not. He careens up and down a flight of stairs with surprising speed for a boy that young. He runs after his sister, sometimes running right into her and purposely colliding heads. He'll throw himself into and out of the bathtub, step off of a bed just figuring that the person in front of him is going to catch him, and in general shows a surprisingly small sense of self-preservation at this stage.

He's also an adventure-seeker. We recently had to relocate our end table to the other end of the loveseat because he would use the height of the entry area to climb onto said end table and play with the lamp that was there, pulling it over a couple of times (and almost pulling it over a few more times, were it not for my lightning-like reflexes).

My plan for our Christmas tree was to put it in a corner and surround it with our couch and our coffee table on its two open sides. The coffee table is lower than the end tables, and even without the height advantage of the entry area, it clearly is a plan that is not going to work. That boy is not going to let a little ol' coffee table stand between him and a big tall tree with shiny things and flashy lights on it. I'm truly puzzled about what to do, since I'm not willing to pay for a fence to put around it and would rather not have to put it downstairs in the family room. I'll figure something out, though, I'm sure.

Today Rachel and I were reading on the couch when he started clamoring for my attention. I figured he felt left out and wanted to be up with us, so I picked him up. He immediately turned to the back of the couch and started to scramble over the couch cushions so that he could grab the string of orange lights that we've had up for Halloween and Thanksgiving. I thought "Well, we'll just remove that temptation and I'll sit on the floor to read." A minute passes, then I feel his hand on my shoulder and realize he's used his jack-in-the-box to step up and my shoulder as leverage so that he can throw himself onto the couch and have another go at the string of lights.

I'm pretty sure he will be the child that bungee-jumps, goes rock climbing, parachutes, and does many other things that will generally cause his mother to have heart palpitations one day. Also, and not coincidentally, I'm sure he's the child most likely to break bones.