02 April 2008

I don't like blue eggs and pain

Or, How do you like your eggs: scrambled, fried, or on your forehead?

The kids on D-'s new Plasma Car, after the bruises subsided somewhatIt seems we have an epidemic at our house of late-- our kids have each developed swollen black and blue bumps on their foreheads. I can only guess that the cause is either some kind of viral infection or their shared habit of bombing around our house with reckless abandon until their faces hit something solid.

It's gruesome to watch these little skin balloons swell up like eggs before your eyes, and painful to see them healing so slowly, with each day bringing a totally different-looking bruise than the day before. The one common denominator for each day's bruise, however, is that it looks like you've thoroughly beaten your kids.

The reality is, of course, that the closest they get to (exasperated) beatings is only after they illegally run through the house for the 400,000th time and finally smash themselves badly enough to have your logic possibly start to sink in, when literally 5 minutes later they take off on their 400,001st run.

As bad as it is to have to comfort an injured child as if they hadn't just deliberately disobeyed you to obtain that injury, you quickly realize that beatings would have no effect anyway, given their willingness to head right back out to do the exact same thing that just caused them horrific pain.

Given their appearances at the time, I was reluctant to bring D- and M- to storytime at the library Monday, but I decided that I can't be the only person who's been in such a situation, and since I have nothing to hide, I took them anyway...

I think any of the moms who might have been thinking about actually talking to me changed their minds that day. Oh well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My niece was a climber with no fear and often would climb something and fall off, then do it again and again. Perhaps she heard the saying, "If at first you don't succeed try try again." She seems to have outgrown the climbing phase finally, but before she did she managed to look quite beaten up most of the time. Of course she would fall on her face before major holidays and/or birthdays or if her paternal grandparents were going to see her (she lives with my family)! Thankfully her father was the same way and so they didn't call DCFS on us!

LiteralDan said...

I think my daughter is just headed INTO such a phase, and both kids certainly have a habit of injuring themselves before big occasions, so I'm shuddering right now.

Momo Fali said...

Funny! I have the same hesitations when my kids were little. I hated to take them out of the house for fear someone would turn me in as a child abuser.