Oh, you guys, it's not the best afternoon I ever had. The baby's in that crazy toddler stage where speed is more important than balance, and she has smacked her forehead hard three times in three days, with the results being one ugly green bruise on the right, one ugly graze in the middle, and one ugly flirtation with stitches, just now.
I took the kids to the park and she was having a blast, running back and forth across a little bridge. She miscalculated, fell, and hit her head. I ran and scooped her up. She wasn't crying terribly hard, but she had an ugly purple line across her forehead, more than an inch long. As I watched, I could see the goose egg forming. Almost instantly it was huge -- she looked like a baby Klingon. (My very own beautiful baby Klingon, you understand.) At the point of impact the skin was taut, shiny, deep purple. I said a little prayer of gratitude, because if that skin had split we would have been off to get stitches for sure.
The icy calm version of me took over and announced that we were leaving immediately and going to get ice for the baby's head. We drove to the Culver's a few minutes away, where I figured the boys could be distracted by ice cream while I applied ice and sympathy. The woman cleaning tables had a lot to say about the situation. "That's really bad," she volunteered helpfully. "How are you gonna bring that down?" Stella regards the application of ice as an Eighth Amendment violation, and as she tossed her head trying to avoid the ice pack, she managed to get a fair amount of ice cream in her hair.
It looks a lot better but it will be another nasty bruise. Poor thing.
The end of school is always a bumpy transition, where the boys get used to being with each other full time again. By the end of the day I am ready to take my introverted self into the nearest closet in order to get some quiet. I know it will just take a couple of weeks for us to settle into a good groove, but they may be a long couple of weeks. The teenager is being teenagerly; the sensitive boy is being very very sensitive. But do you know, the baby just stopped nursing so she could smile and wave at me. You take your consolations where you can get them, I guess.
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