How your toddler can make you healthier

A link to this article came in my email this morning. The ways your toddler can make you healthier, according to this article, include the following:

Reduced risk of cancer
Relief from "female disorders"
Motivation to make healthy choices
A head start on happiness

OK, yeah, blah blah blah. They left out the biggest way a toddler helps his/her mommy to good health: the constant leaping up from your chair while yelping things like, “Ah! Not the stove, not the STOVE!!” or “Ack, how did you ever get UP THERE?!?!?!” or “Where’s Poopsie? Where’s Poopsie?! WHO LEFT THE GATE OPEN?!?!?!?!”

All that jumping and running and racing and good-old artery clearing adrenaline are worth a year’s membership at a gym any day.

Yesterday, for example, I glanced up and Captain Adventure was standing on the rocking horse (!) so he could reach the very tip-top of the shorter shelf (!!) which is where we’ve been putting all the things we don’t want him flinging on the floor (!!!).

I think I lost two pounds just from the shock of seeing him teetering away up there.

And that’s not even counting all the rounds of hokey-pokey in the kitchen, or London Bridging, or ballet dancing (I never took ballet, and believe me anybody older than, say, five will guess it), or having to climb up the play equipment to pluck someone who has gotten a leeeeeeetle bit higher than they were comfortable with from their perch.

Ah yes. Healthy living through constant agitation. Gotta love it.