Sep
3
Battered
Filed Under Uncategorized | 160 Comments
I was just walking in from the backyard when I heard JB saying “Oh no, oh god, oh shit” and I saw him running out the open front door and just beyond him I could see the stroller lying on its side and Dylan was screaming, screaming, screaming. I ran and I may have been screaming something myself and Dylan’s legs were kicking from where he was strapped in the stroller’s seat and one wheel was still turning but instead of being on the ground it was turning in the air and JB was pulling the stroller up and getting Dylan out and his little face was bleeding and Riley was still bent over the stroller trying to help and Riley was scared and I was sobbing and I knew for certain our baby had a shattered arm or worse.
I hugged him against my body and I stood inside the house crying all over his soft hair while he buried his face in my chest and I held him out for a second and his eyes were frightened and hurt and his cheek had a bright red droplet of blood and the right side of his face was scraped and turning red and a dark shadow of a bruise was already starting to appear.
We checked him over and he wound down to a sorrowful snuffle and nothing appeared to be broken. JB put some Neosporin on him and we fed him bananas and yogurt with a little blackberry jam and oatmeal and he devoured it all and grinned at us. I put him on the floor to play for a while then I rocked him and gave him a bottle and kissed him a lot and put him to bed as usual and his sleepy little banged-up face tore a hole in my heart.
It was my fault. We were getting ready to go for a walk and I left the stroller on the top step of our front porch, unlocked, while I went back in to feed the dog. Riley walked out the front and went to innocently (and probably clumsily) push the stroller towards the driveway and it toppled off the step and fell over and Dylan’s face connected directly with our exposed aggregate walkway.
I don’t know how he didn’t get hurt more than he did.
There is a word for how I feel about the whole accident, but I’m not sure what it is. Terrible doesn’t quite cover it. Guilty seems too mild. I suppose I learned a valuable lesson — always, always lock the fucking stroller — but oh, god. Who actually fails the “keep baby from falling headfirst onto hard surfaces” parenting directive? It’s right up there in the top no-shitter, easy-do responsibilities: FEED BABY, OCCASIONALLY REMOVE FILTH FROM BABY, DO NOT ALLOW BABY TO SMASH INTO CONCRETE.
Sep
2
Ducks
Filed Under Uncategorized | 57 Comments
Oh, I am so glad to be home. That whole trip was a bit . . . tedious. I say that thinking of how sometimes I’ll read someone’s blog entry where they’ll mention how their kid was up all night with the barfing flu and how that was kind of exhausting and if you haven’t been in that particular situation before you might think, well, bummer, and move on — but if you have in fact been up during the night with a barfing child you know exactly how utterly horrific it is, how exhausted you are and how your reserves are at an all-time low when the clock reads 3:24 AM and there is barf everywhere, dear god, the logistics of the cleanup job before you is nearly too much to consider and yet you MUST, and there’s that nerve-shattering sound of bathwater cascading into the tub at the completely wrong time of day, and the ominous hum of the washing machine, and you’re worried half out of your mind that your kid has actually contracted some rare African strain of Barf-Then-Die-itis, and you’re thinking, wow, this whole parenthood thing was a really, REALLY terrible idea, and most of all you know that you’ll be repeating the entire process, perhaps as soon as 3:52 AM — anyway, the word “exhausting” doesn’t really cover it, but sometimes that’s all the author can bring themselves to say about the subject.
So: tedious. It was a tedious summer vacation, and I am dying to get back to all my supposedly non-relaxing things like work and freelance projects and even struggling to make it through 20 minutes of 30 Day Shred without voiding my bladder/horking a lung out my right nostril/succumbing to the sweet, sweet relief of death.
Somebody left me a comment once about how family photos are like looking at ducks in the water, how you only see part of what’s really there — all the furious paddling underneath is hidden. I love that, it’s so true, and it’s one of the reasons I love taking so many pictures. It helps me remember and focus on the good moments, and let the memories fade of the churn it took just to make it through the day.
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