Staples

My husband went to get the children today while I was at the house with the carpet cleaning gentlemen.   When they got home, we all went outside and started to eat on the porch (as all the tables   and chairs were up or pushed out of the way of the carpeted areas.

I looked at my daughter's head and said, "I think she painted with red today."   I picked up her hair and realized it wasn't paint, it was blood and she had an inch-long gash in her head.  I picked up the phone and called the school, because any time there is any injury to the head (not matter how small) they have to write up an incident report.

The administrator went to ask the class lead teacher, who didn't know anything about it—and she was the one who put my daughter in the car.   The wound was on the side of her head that her teacher was looking at when she fastened the car seat, so it must not have been bleeding much at when she put her in.   It was bleeding, but it was doing so very slowly, so that made sense to my husband and me.

I told the administrator to give me a call if they thought of anything and thanked them.    We took a picture of the cut and I texted it to my friend who is a doctor.   She called me immediately and told me she'd sent it on to her husband who was in the ER with a pediatrician (he's a doctor too) and the pediatrician said to take my daughter in to get some staples, because he thought the cut was deep enough to merit them.

I told my neighbor thanks for the advice and I would do so.   I called our pediatrician's office and the nurse told me they didn't do it so I should take her to the emergency room.  Another quick talk with my neighbor and she suggested Urgent Care as an alternative.  I didn't think a slow-bleeding one-inch wound really merited an emergency room visit, so I put my happy daughter into the car and she and I and her pink tutu went off to Urgent Care.

Just as we arrived, the assistant teacher in my daughter's class called and was quite worried.  She told me a story of something that happened just before my daughter got into the car at pickup that she thought must have been when she cut her head:  she had been sitting on the bench for after-school children because she wanted to be beside Malcom and there had been something that happened where they bumped into each other and she fell down.   She cried for a short time and Susan (the teacher) talked to her and Malcom about how bumps happen when we're not careful.   And that was it.  She stopped crying and sat on the other bench and shortly was put into the car.

Her teacher was very apologetic and concerned.  I told her to please not worry about it because she wasn't upset when she got home and had there not been blood, we wouldn't have noticed it.    I hung up and we went into the Urgent Care to check my daughter in.

Forty minutes later we left the office with two staples in my daughter's head.   She was happy throughout the entire procedure, singing the school birthday song and chatting with me about the number of staples she was going to get among other things.   She cried for about twenty seconds after the staples went in, but other than that, it was a non-event in her mind.

She is, just as Papa said, his "Rough and Tumble Girl".

The Big Boy Update:   My neighbor's twenty-month-old is running now and has had lots of tumbles and face scrapes.   My son, in trying to help, kept stopping Whitaker yesterday from pushing the toy shopping cart at full speed down the street.   He was trying to help, but his way of stopping Whitaker was to try and grab him and make him stop.   When we realized what he was doing we told him it was very nice for him to try and protect Whitaker.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Two staples and hardly any tears (see above).   We're still not sure how it happened.   I hope no one turned us in as negligent parents.