The Start of Summer....I Hope Not!

Today's Cast of characters: Dearest Husband - almost older than dirt

                                          Myself - as old as dirt

                                          Mr. Scientist- 10 yo

                                          Miss Dancer- 8 yo

                                          Destructo Boy- 4 yo
                                          Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor- wonderful neighbors of over 30 years

No, this isn’t about the temperature outside, although at 50 degrees the children thought it was too hot and needed popsicles, of which we had none.

It is more about when you hear a crying child and other children screaming, “Blood, Blood!”

The 3 kids were finally outside playing nicely. They had made an obstacle course and were having a lot of fun. All this exercise then demanded a healthy snack, so oranges were pealed and taken outside. Plenty of water was drank (or is that drunk?) and all was well… or so I thought

While I was doing dishes, thinking how lovely my children were, I suddenly hear crying and screaming about blood. Now, this reaction can result from a small scrape, so I wasn’t too excited. I went to the door, opened it and saw all 3 children running towards the house, like something was chasing them. With the yelling of “blood”, maybe it was a vampire? No, even with all the vampire books and shows, I knew they weren’t after my kids.

 As the children came up the deck, Destructo Boy was crying, holding out his hand and yelling blood. His hand was covered in blood and I ran to the kitchen sink, threw on the cold water, shoved over the clean dishes and got ready to find the source of the blood. That was when Mr. Scientist yelled about  Destructo Boy’s head. Source of blood found and there was a lot!

“Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding” was running through my head as I a grabbed a clean wash cloth from the drawer. Seeing the gash I knew I could not just apply pressure, but I needed to close the wound.  I stood behind him, leaning him against me I grabbed with the washcloth the skin above the eye and pinched it closed and applied pressure.  Of course while doing this my mind was racing: do I need an ambulance, wow look at the trail of blood on the kitchen floor, how can I let go of him, why didn’t I take a shower and get dressed today, what do I do now? 

I sent Mr. Scientist to go get “Mrs. Neighbor”; he comes back and says, “She wasn’t home but Mr. Neighbor is coming”. OK good, now I’ll have another adult because I’m not feeling very adultish.

Mr. Neighbor comes, looks and responds, “Oh ya, that’ll need stitches.” Hmm, I’m not feeling better yet. I give the job of holding wound closed to Mr. Neighbor and go look for the butterfly bandages. Now, why is it that whenever we need a bandage all we can ever find are the butterfly ones, and now when I need them, I can’t find them? After what seemed like forever, I find some and making sure they were butterfly strips and not Breathe Right strips I take them to Mr. Neighbor.

We go outside, where there is better light and more room, and start applying the strips all the while Destructo Boy is busy looking at his blood covered hand crying that there is still blood. Miss Dancer went and got a wet washcloth to wash his hand. Then we thanked and said goodbye to Mr. Neighbor and let Mr. Scientist and Miss Dancer hold Destructo Boy while I got dressed.

Once the blood was off Destructo Boy’s hand, he never cried again. We went to our nearest Urgent Care (20 minutes away) and met Dearest Husband. Destructo Boy did great. He hadn’t seen his head and when he saw it in a mirror there, he let out an “ouch!” No stitches but lots of glue. The blood mixed with the glue and now his head looks worse than it is. The gash was a little over an inch long and deeper than I wanted to see.

Destructo Boy and his boo-boo. The darkest horizontal line is the gash, the lighter , long horizontal blood is where my finger got glued to him...I'll leave that for another post. 

Everyone is fine today and things are back to normal here. As a matter of fact the kids are playing nicely  outside with sidewalk chalk… Miss Dancer just came in and told me they are drawing “dead bodies”. “We are pretending to stab ourselves with the chalk and then draw the dead body. Mr. Scientist drew me but then he drew me fat!” Yep, things are back to normal.

Destructo Boy wanted his picture taken doing his Zombie pose. (That's what he calls it)

Update: I've been asked how this happened. Well after the obstacle course and oranges they decided to make a balance beam type of thing. We now know Destructo Boy can't balance. And that balancing activity has been banned.