#4- It Would be Helpful if I Could Ninja Roll out of the Recliner

A head incision, a monkey named Henry, and a recliner are the characters in this story. Ah...my recliner. I do love it greatly. I avoided ever buying one because they are so hideous looking and impossible to blend into any style of living room. However, after my original VP shunt surgery, I found it hard to sleep in a flat bed, and I often rolled over on the bad side causing gross pillowslips and a ton of pain the next morning. Therefore, I surrendered my anti-recliner stance and began to desperately want one.

My fellow zipperhead planned better and purchased her duo of recliners BEFORE coming home from her surgery. Good thinking Gretchen! So thanks to some Christmas money, Kyle and I headed to Nebraska Furniture Mart to claim our comfy chair that would ruin my living room motif (I didn't really have one anyway). We settled on the biggest, cushioniest, ugliest chair in that small town of furniture. It had a "bump," non itchy brown material, and it rocked. Lastly, it reclined ALL the way back and remained in that reclining position, making it a perfect nest for a few weeks.

Henry, our friskiest child, is always climbing onto and off of laps when he's not jumping off couches, benches, and tables. He just has amazing balance and curiosity of how his body will land the higher he goes up.


So it wasn't too alarming when he climbed onto my lap one cold winter afternoon. I was taking advantage of the full reclining feature the chair offered when he wiggled onto my lap. Then he crawled up to the lumbar/headrest part of the recliner. Smack! 1/2 my body weight mixed with his made the recliner tip backwards. Like, all the way backwards. As in "I'm now staring at the ceiling with my legs in the air" backwards.

Now what I do?  Henry just rolls out of the situation effortlessly with a back ninja roll. I would have done the same (without the accompanying grace) if I didn't have 19 staples in my head. And the fact we fell into a corner made it impossible to roll out sideways.  Here is a pic of the little monkey peeking out of his demolition. He, of course, thought this whole thing was HILARIOUS!



My Monkey smiling at Dad before he helps me up

With such concern Franki, Moe, and Henry tried to pull me up; it was really cute, but they didn't know really how much I weighed. Luckily Moe is a responsible kid and was able to follow one command: Go Get Daddy! He ran downstairs to "Daddy's Workshop" and told Kyle he needed to help me (as if he hadn't heard the earth-rattling crash!). So Kyle comes upstairs to this ridiculous situation. Unfortunately, I did not learn from that and had two more recliner tips, but I was able to do that ungraceful ninja roll I wanted to execute earlier in the year.