I did not calm down in 10 minutes, however. I was shaking for hours, couldn't sleep that night and kept replaying the incident over and over. He appeared to be fine, having landed squarely on his back but, being a first-time parent, I was convinced he had a concussion and was bleeding internally. I'm sure with our second child he or she will lose a finger in the garbage disposal and I'll just put it on ice until after the Ducks game. When Shelbi got home she did what I had purposely avoided. She went on the internet where fear mongering has become an art form. (When Elliott got his two-month shots and was a little loopy, Shelbi went on-line for information and I found her a few minutes later with tears streaming down her face. She had stumbled onto an entire site devoted to people whose babies had died within 24 hours of their first vaccinations. Lovely.)

I just knew there were going to be gruesome stories of baby falls that didn't spare any details. Instead, we discovered that, apparently, babies' heads are as durable as the black box on planes. People have been dropping their babies for years like it was going out of style. This one fell off a picnic table onto concrete. Fell of my shoulders straight onto his head. Crib collapsed. Two-week old fell off a table. And all were fine. We e-mailed our pediatrician and her response was basically: "Falling off a bed is a rite of passage for a baby. Wait until he starts moving. Then you'll REALLY see some injuries." Even my mom one-upped me. When I told her, she wasn't worried and said: "Your brother fell off the washer when he was six months old."

But, again, I was more than a little shaken up. I didn't want to put Elliott down for the rest of the afternoon (which probably wasn't smart given my horrific attempt at catching him earlier.) And it got me thinking. I vividly remember Elliott's time in the NICU after he was born. Same goes for taking him to Doernbecher Children's Hospital for his heart murmur. I even remember how petrified we were when Elliott got a cold when he was one month old. All of those things affect me so much more strikingly than watching Elliott roll over or seeing him smile at me. Not to belittle how incredible it has been to watch this six-pound blob turn into a smiling, happy, healthy rolling boy with a little personality over the past six months but, in my mind, the bad things that happen to him hurt SO much more than the good things are joyous. And I imagine that will always be the case. I will be heartbroken for Elliott when he doesn't make the basketball team or gets turned down by a girl he likes and seeing that will likely hurt far more than the amount of pride I will feel when he comes home with a perfect report card or plays a song at a recital perfectly. Maybe I'm wrong.

But I liken it to being a sports fan. I remember every painful loss that one of my teams endured like it was yesterday. When the Giants lost a 2001 playoff game, I couldn't get out of bed the next morning to go to class. When they lost Game 6 of the 2002 World Series, I drove up I-205 at around 100 mph until I was 50 miles into Washington out of rage. When Dennis Dixon blew out his knee ending the Ducks' national title hopes two years ago, I just went to bed at around 7:30 without eating dinner. And yet, when one of my teams pulls out a big win, it is almost a feeling of relief instead of joy. When the 49ers won the Super Bowl nearly 15 years ago, I was just happy that it was finally over. I don't think back to that win with fondness nearly as much as I remember a 'roided up Scott Spiezio belting his home run off Felix Rodriguez in Game 6.

And with Elliott, when he hits a milestone, it comes as a relief. Phew, he's rolling over. Phew, he's tracking things. Phew, he's developed an unhealthy admiration for his own toes. Perhaps it's a flaw in my personality and I need to just slow down and enjoy everything that he does when it happens. Or perhaps this is just what being a parent is like. Your life is instantly enriched and it's nearly impossible to recognize it at the time because it's so hard to imagine life without your child but the worry and the pain are much more immediate emotions. All I know is if Elliott gets dumped on the same day the 49ers lose the Super Bowl, it would probably be wise to get out of my way.