About that shiner

My beautiful baby boy.
And his big, bad bang up.
Just two days later and SERIOUSLY! Black and blue and green and bruised. My poor kiddo.

(On the above picture, those are just crumbs on his lips- no further injury, just crumbs:-))

Even a few days later, the bruising seems to be sallowing out in color but you would never believe the swelling that came along with the color that just doesn't capture on photos.It's sad isn't it? My Sweetie boy; banged up and bruised. And while you're heart is full of sympathy pain, how about the Mom-Guilt that I've been carrying since this happened on my watch? Horrible, I'm telling you.

It happened last Saturday when Elaina and Lincoln were busy playing in the living room, creating ramps and forts with the giant cushions from the sofa. This hasn't been uncommon since Elaina recently learned that jumping off of her slide onto the stripped sofa is a much more thrilling jump without the extra 20" of padding, making it way steeper. Anyhow, I was busy making dinner while Eric was hunting and had been peeking around the corner every couple minutes as I moved from task to task in preparing our meal. One minute I saw Elaina manhandling a sofa cushion as Lincoln bounded happily at the other end of the stripped sofa awaiting his turn to land himself onto a heaping mass of cushions piling upon the floor. Barely 2 minutes had passed when I heard a God-awful cry coming from Lincoln that I had never heard before. As I ran to see what had taken place, I could only determine that rather than landing safely on the cushions, he took a spill onto the edge of the toy box which had been bordering the mound. His nose was instantly bloodied and I could hardly deny the sick knot forming within my throat.

A closer look at his face revealed the most obvious cut in the side of his nose, slight blood coming from each nostril and a scratch next to his eye. Taking into account how and where he must have landed and the damage that was clearly visible, I was thanking God that it wasn't worse. God, it really could have been worse. Can you imagine? With that, I actually felt a slight sense of relief that he was really going to be alright despite what was before me.

So, there's the story behind the shiner and the gauged nose on my handsome boy. We've established a new rule in the house that the sofa cushions may never come off of the sofa unless a grown up is helping. It takes just one bumped up kid to take away all of the fun doesn't it?