Lessons in Motherhood

This is a long blog to get to a simple point – As of today, the new tally in number of ER visits due to injury or accident:

Sophia 1 – Hailey 0

Now, before you panic and skip to the end of the blog to see if she’s alive, I will tell you that Sophia is ok – temporarily disfigured, but completely ok.

So, this whole thing started on Thursday, when Sophia showed me that she knew how to go down the stairs.  I didn’t teach her to go down stairs.  I had tried to teach her to go down backwards because that is the safest way, but of course, she wanted nothing to do with that because her sister goes down forwards, I go down forwards, so why on Earth would she go down backwards.  Totally not cool, Mom.  So, she took it upon herself to learn how to do the butt slide then step technique.  Here she is showing off her skills.  (You’ll notice that she only has one shoe on. There’s a perfectly good explanation for that – it’s just how she rolls.)

So, just after this video was taken, she had successfully made it down the entire flight of stairs.  The whole flight – no injuries.  Not even five minutes later, she was running around the dining room (on a totally flat surface with both shoes on) when she tripped and slid face first into the corner of the dining room table leg.  She ended up with a huge bruise in a straight line on her forehead.  I decided to take her to the coffee shop to get some ice cream, you know, for the pain.

While we were there she fell off the kids chair (while I was sitting right next to her) and whacked the back of her head on the concrete floor. OMG.  What is wrong with this kid???  Luckily, the kids chair was very low to the ground, and she was just fine.   Still, that was two potentially traumatic head injuries in one night – a record even for Fifi.

Cut to Sunday morning.  The whole family went to the Grant Park playground to have some outdoor time while it was still only hot and sticky as opposed to later when it’s oppressive and unbreathable.  We got there at about 9:15 and left at about 10:14 with a screaming child.

So, here’s how the whole thing went down.  Sophia played for about 10 minutes on the little kid play structure, but that was so not cool when her sister was on the big girl play structure.  Thus, she had to go on the big girl play structure which is about 8 feet tall.  

Now, I followed her like a hawk around that thing all morning long.  She was very careful, and I positioned myself at every point where she might tumble down.  She was having a grand time climbing up and going down one of the big slides.  She did that three or four times.  Then, apparently wanted to try something else.  She went towards the slide, and then decided to make a right and go down a few steps.  Unfortunately, she missed a step, tumbled down onto another landing, down on a final step, and then to the ground.  I didn’t see the beginning of the fall because I was already headed under the structure to get a better angle on her.  Luke saw her though, and knew that she had bounced, hitting her neck and side.  It was SCARY!  Like, I was shaking when I picked her up scary.  

Even though she seemed fine, we decided to take her to the ER just to be sure.  The doctors checked her out, and she was indeed fine.  However, there is one very unfortunate side effect…she looks like a Romulan.