It Never Fails

As I was driving to my Monday night Bible study/dinner out/conversation time with adults my car started to make noises at me. There's a strange phenomenon that happens to military wives. It may happen to civilian wives as well but I guess the stories aren't as widespread. Whenever the hubby goes off to work for more than 24 hours something happens. The car breaks down, the pipes burst, your hair catches fire while you're training for the circus. SOMEthing. I thought about this as my dash lights came on and the car dinged at me. Fortunately, it was just telling me it was thirsty for Windex.

My kids were extremely needy today. I don't know if it's because they're making up for the fact that daddy won't be home for a few days or they're plotting against me to get my insurance money so they can spend it all on fruit snacks. I was interrupted at least 57.368 times during the two and a half hours I spent at our Monday night destination. Trey was told by two different adults to not do something and chose to ignore the warnings and ended up in time out. Leah can't quite say what she wants and gets frustrated that our IQ isn't as high as hers and therefore we have no clue what's going on. Eventually the kids all found something to do. Just as I thought to myself, "finally. They're all playing upstairs and I can have a break!", someone starts to cry. It doesn't sound like mine.

"Who's crying?" my friend Heather asks.
"Leah. She's bleeding."

I race up the stairs to see my daughter's mouth covered in blood. It has dripped all over her arm, skirt and the carpet below her. I grabbed her, dodged the other kids and raced down the stairs into the bathroom to get a closer look. Are all of her teeth still there? Did she bite her tongue? Did she cut herself? What happened?? I start to panic and think, "Bill's not here. What if I have to go to the hospital? What do I do? Who's gonna take Trey? What if she needs stitches?"

In an effort to prevent Leah from hurting herself, Trey pulled his little sister off the ladder to a bunkbed, Leah fell and bit halfway through her bottom lip. It's bad. It's raw. She's in pain. I'm in pain. I pumped her full of Motrin, gave her the boob and we left. I held her hand the entire drive home, mind you I'm driving so I've now earned my contortionist license and I'm really trying to not freak out on Trey. We're home and she falls asleep right at nine--early for her.

She just woke up, crying and in pain. I just pray that she heals quickly and she rests peacefully tonight. It's going to be a long week.

The poor kid is not even two yet and has experienced two black eyes, numerous bumps and scratches, a gnarly scrape to the face after falling off our bed and catching her forehead on What to do the Toddler Years (Could I even make that up?) and now this. So, I leave you the irony of this picture:
















This would be the book scraping incident of '06. If you have any extra bubble wrap, send it my way.