People visiting with Cole will quickly notice bumps and bruises. His shins in particular seem to take a beating; though, now that he’s walking I’m not entirely sure where from. It used to be my suspicion that the bruises were from crawling over our long gate (there’s a metal bar along the bottom, not just bare floor), but now I’m not so sure.
He is a head-clanging fool. Gave himself a good little goose-egg when he unexpectedly threw his head forward into Alex’s earlier this morning.
Most of the time, you don’t feel guilty about these things. As a parent, you know that you can’t protect them from everything, and you know that a few bumps and bruises aren’t a bad learning tool. But sometimes, intellectualizing these things doesn’t take away from that horrid feeling when your child is crying (screaming!) from physical pain.
Earlier this evening we were car shopping. He didn’t want to be held. He gets rather insistent on being put down, and when there’s no really good reason to insist on holding him, why wouldn’t you just let him practice walking? He’s walked on concrete and asphalt several times without incident, so I elected to put him down and let him run around. He fell a few times, got a feel for that particular asphalt, and all seemed fine in the world. Then he took one particular spill and didn’t put his hands far enough out front. So his momentum carried him forward so that he wasn’t in “pushup” position anymore, but rather his hands ended up down below his chest area and consequently his face scraped along the surface. Not good. Little bit of skin scraped on the tip of his nose and also his upper lip. No teeth damaged and no internal (tooth on inner mouth) injuries. But it hurt. It hurt a lot.
So with my baby boy screaming in surprise and pain, and with even mom’s hugs not able to comfort him, I stood there thinking to myself, “I’m supposed to catch you.” Of course, Alex was quite understanding, reminding me, “You can’t catch’em every time. He’s a child. He’s going to get scraped up plenty before it’s all said and done.” Which helped a lot. But I still felt awful. I suppose the best I can hope for is that I catch him when it really counts, and do my best to mimimize those “screaming pain” moments without getting so paranoid that I stifle his independence.
I suppose Cole himself confirmed that a scrape isn’t the end of the world… even though he was still upset, it wasn’t long before he wanted back down. A bit shy of running around at first, but soon right back at it, ready to take the next scrape as he continues to learn.
Awww…poor baby. It’s true. There will be plenty more falls that we won’t catch, but it’s hard to watch.
Big ol’ bruise on his forehead is still not gone. But yet he trucks on, running around like a little maniac and loving every second of it!