How is it that I can be in a room with Tyler, teaching him words and sounds, playing and wrestling with him, and having a fun and safe time, and Sarah can come into the room at the EXACT moment I am being a bad and neglectful dad? The world can be cruel and perverse in its humor at times.

We have been working with Tyler on “Hi” and “Bye bye,” and play a game that Tyler really loves. He walks out of his room, and turns to face us. “Bye bye, Tyler,” we say to him.

“Buh bye,” Tyler replies while waving.

After shutting the door between us, Tyler knocks on the door and yells in his cute, little-boy voice, “NA NA,” in his best interpretation of “knock knock.”

“Who is it?”

“TY TY,” he yells through the cheap wooden door!

“OHHHH, Ty Ty,” we say while opening the door, “come innnnnn. HI.”

“Hi,” Tyler responds. He come in, gives us a kiss and runs back out.

Repeat, ad nauseum.

Yesterday, Tyler and I were in the living room, football playing on the television, while Sarah cooked dinner. Suddenly, Tyler said “bye bye,” and disappeared from view into the stairway. I extended my farewells and snuck closer so I could keep a secretive eye on him. I watched Tyler pull the baby gate door and close it before yelling out “NA NA!”

We played the game for a few minutes, smiling and laughing and having a grand ol’ time. He would lean over the gate from the second step and kiss me prior to saying our goodbyes again. At one point, he reached for a candle on a ledge. I told him “no no” and that candles are “very HHHHHOT and dangerous.” Tyler pulled his hand back, said “Hhhhhhhaaa” and we continued our fun.

And then Sarah came in the room to see what the score was, and to see what silliness her boys were up to. I explained that the station stopped airing the destruction that the evil Patriots were dealing to the Titans, and was instead broadcasting a more closely matched Bills / Jets game. As I relayed the information, I didn’t notice Tyler leaning over the gate for his kiss. Leaning way too far over the gate. Well, I did notice, but it was too late. Of course, Sarah noticed too. We both watched as his waist created a fulcrum point against the top of the baby gate. His upper body and lower body became opposing ends of a see-saw. Cruel little Disaster Jones sat on one side, and the much nicer, and much lighter, Happy McSafety sat upon Tyler’s legs. I’ll give you three guesses what happened next, and the first two don’t count.

I’d be lying if I told you that watching Tyler upend and flip over the baby gate wasn’t a little funny. Actually, it was a lot funny, but first we had to get to the business of making sure Tyler was going to live before daddy could snicker, snort, and laugh. What made it funny wasn’t THAT Tyler fell, but rather HOW Tyler fell. It wasn’t graceful, by any stretch, but it also wasn’t awkward either. His body remained perfectly straight, as if a board were splinted against him. If the same were to happen to me from an appropriately proportional height, I would have landed in a crumpled heap, with an arm twisted behind my back and my legs in a physically questionable arrangement. With Tyler, it was as if his body simply rotated in the air. It rotated until his hands hit the floor, and continued to do so until he landed on his back, supine, looking up at us with a “was that SUPPOSED to happen?” look on his face. With a cautiously optimistic expression, I looked him over, mostly looking for limbs bent at odd angles. All the while, hysterical laughter danced and tickled at the back of my throat. But he lay there, perfectly straight, perfectly fi–

Before I could even finish my mental prognosis, Sarah scooped him into her arms, asking if he was okay, and smothering him with kisses. The mommy genes kicked in with force.

“Oh, he’s fine,” I said, mentally adding, of course he’s fine, he’s my boy.

And he was fine. Whether from being my roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble boy, or from the plethora of healing kisses that his mommy bandaged him with, we may never know. Maybe it was a little bit of both.