4th Time

This morning, I fell down the stairs for the 4th time since living in this house. Mind you, it's not a small staircase. I think I counted 15 stairs--and they go straight up...or straight down, depending on how you look at them (thanks alot to the builder of the house).
I never really thought I was a clutz, but I'm starting to really question it...

In case you are all wondering, it has never seriously hurt me. I can always catch myself (thank goodness for the rail), but for the next few days I ache all over. Only once has a fall produced a bruise on my backside.

Fall #1: I was 8 weeks pregnant with Caroline and somehow lost my footing. I fell straight down and hit my bottom on roughly 5 stairs before sprawling out far enough to get a foot on one wall, a hand on another, and wedging myself in a weird position to stop the fall.

Fall #2: I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes on a Saturday morning, wasn't really looking, and missed a stair--at the top. I fell about half way down before I performed the same wedging action mentioned in Fall #1.

Fall #3: It was dark---maybe 10pm---my pajama pants were too long and a bit too stretchy---my foot caught on them. I started a head first fall, but was able to grab the rail with both hands and minimize the damage.

Fall #4: I was going downstairs with Christian this morning at 6am. My heel somehow slipped on the VERY FIRST STAIR and I went down. Amazingly I was able to grab the rail and the safety gate at the top of the stairs simultaneously which kept me from going down the entire 15 stairs on my back/head/bottom. Christian freaked out--I think I wrenched my back. Shoulders are a bit sore too.

Sheesh. I tell ya---as much as I love having a 2 story house, I'm ready to move somewhere where the only stairs I go down are off the front porch. I'm sure that's not a guarantee that I won't stumble, but at least I won't see my life flashing before my eyes each time I trip, like I do on these stairs.
Did I mention John has actually fallen on these stairs too?!? Seriously, hearing a large man go crashing down at 5am is NOT what I want to wake up to--he laughed, I freaked.
You get the picture.