Luke's First Injury



Luke's first injury

 Given his fall down the stairs, his love for climbing, his new affinity for jumping on the furniture, and his fierce independence, I've already started preparing myself for the idea that Luke will be our kid that breaks limbs and needs stitches. There are emergency room trips in his future. I know it in my bones.

This morning, he got his first official injury, meaning, one that left a mark.

 Every morning when we leave the house, he walks across the porch and down the stairs by himself. He's like a horse at the starting gate, bursting out of the front door when I open it. He stops along the way to greet all of the statue animals, and by the time I've put the bags in the car, he's coming down the stairs. He is very careful, coming down sideways so he can hang on to the railing with both hands. I'm usually there to grab him at the bottom so I can put him in his carseat.

This morning, just as I turned around to get him from the steps, I saw him fall from the bottom step onto the driveway. On his face. He was wearing pants today, and I think his foot got caught in his pants leg, tripping him up. I knew from the landing that it hurt, and then he started to cry. I scooped him up and got a close enough look to know there was blood, so we headed back into the house to clean it up.

He was crying hard, so I sat on the toilet and nursed him while I wiped his face with a warm rag to clean off the dirt and blood. That calmed him down enough that he tried to get out of my lap as I put Neosporin on the scrapes. By the time we headed back out to the car, he was well enough to slide down my leg and toddle across the porch and down the steps all by himself.

He has a scrape next to his eyebrow, under his eye, and on the corner of his nose. I can't tell yet if it's going to be a nasty bruise, but it already looks pretty pitiful - especially with those sad eyes and that puffed out lip. I'm pretty sure he's going to work this for all it's worth.