Skin

So just as things were getting back to normal with Em, we experienced our first scraped skin episode. I know kids fall and get hurt all the time. I just didn't imagine it happening to Emerson so soon! There is a Sesame Street (yes, we watch A LOT of this) episode that has been running through my mind quite a bit lately. It's all about skin and there is a cartoon during Elmo's World that is about "the girl who loved her skin." It goes on about how she takes good care of skin... keeping it warm when it's cold, cool when it's hot, putting lotion on, etc. Anyway, the girl falls while roller skating and hurts her skin. Then the girl's mom puts ointment and a band aid on her because she also loves the girls skin. Well, let's just say that I love Emerson's skin and I hate seeing her skin hurt. Here's what happened...

We were playing outside as usual, running all around the yard and exploring. I followed Emerson into the front yard and she got going too fast on the front sidewalk. I'm not sure if she tripped or what exactly happened, but before I could get close enough to slow her down, she was on the ground. She didn't just stumble and fall straight down, instead she fell forward and kind of skidded before stopping. The worst part of it was that Emerson basically met the cement with her face. It just makes me cringe thinking about it. Somehow she ended up on her back (I think she must have rolled while hitting the ground) and just seemed stunned. I scooped her up immediately and then the tears began (from us both!). I ran into the house, not quite sure what to do next. Nothing seemed deep, she was bleeding on her forehead, nose, and from her mouth. I took a wet washcloth to her face to gently wipe away the dirt and clean her up a bit. She cried very hard for a minute or two and then her two little fingers went right into her mouth and she angrily sucked on those little fingers. I grabbed a bottle and she sucked the whole things down in no time. And then she was just fine and on to playing some more like nothing happened. Most of her forehead and nose was red and just appeared to be surface layer skin that was scraped. She hardly bled and there didn't seem to be a need for any bandages. I was worried about her having hit her head, but, again, she appeared just fine and, as Todd continued to remind me for the next several hours, I was taking it much worse than Emerson. I couldn't help it, I just felt terrible, I was suppose to protect her and her skin.

Over the course of the next several hours, Em continued to do great and I thought that possibly what looked so bad was probably just red from the impact and hopefully by the next day the redness would be gone. The next morning, Todd got up early with Em and let me sleep in a bit (he's so good about getting up with her on the weekends!). When I came downstairs, expecting to see Em's face greatly improved, I was so shocked to see it look worse that the day before. What looked like just red areas the previous day, was indeed all slightly scraped. So, this next day it was already scabbing over, which made it look so much more pronounced. I almost started to cry, but again Todd reminded me this is normal for kids to fall and get hurt and that it's no big deal and instead of being upset about I should take some pictures of Em because this too is something that we should document about her. What?! Was he crazy, there was no way I wanted to record and remember this event! He got the camera out while Em was eating breakfast and started snapping away. Eventually, I realized he was right and that we should record some of the not so good because it's just part of our life. So, reluctantly, I am putting up these pictures of Emerson because now that a week has past I know that she is just about completely healed (only just a very slight redness is left and if you didn't know she had scraped her face, you probably wouldn't even notice the redness that is left). Looking back, the pictures look a lot better than what it seemed like at the time. What's great about these pics is that although Em looks terrible with all the scrapes, she is so happy and giving off lots of cheesy grins & giggles.