Camera vs. Face

Isn't he beautiful?  Even with a gash across his nose?

I let Miles use the camera.  That was the first mistake.  Truthfully, it wasn't even my camera to let him use, but he asked so excitedly, and his red curls have that magic tendency to pull a yes from me.  I'll deal with the reprecusions from McKenzie later, I thought as I handed her prized purple camera over to the eager hands and watched him run down the hall.  Minutes later I heard a solid thwack and Carson came stumbling out of the bedroom with his hands over his face, crying out in pain.  

Each of my children deal with pain differently.  McKenzie has a tendency to collapse to the floor and roll around moaning if her hangnail pulls in a funny direction.  If she doesn't get attention, the moans quickly escalate to a frantic loud panting, whimpering, and eventually end in deep screams.

Miles largely ignores pain.  The kid has more bumps and bruises than I can count, but I rarely hear about them (unless he remembers that Band-aids exist in this world and then he'll ask for several).  When I do hear about his pain, however, it's big.  Jumping up and down, shaking hands and screaming big.  His face goes pale and gigantic tears course down his cheeks.  (One time he even turned blue and passed out before he took a breath from the initial (hard) impact.  Scariest. Thing. Ever.)

Carson braves his way through it.  He'll try to hide his tears by blinking them away quickly and fool the world with a closed-mouth smile until the shock of the pain wears away enough for him to tell me 'It's okay.  I'm okay.' 

So when Carson stumbled out of the bedroom crying out in pain, I knew something was probably broken and it got the 'run down the hall' out of me.  (Do you really ever run in your house?  Funny that kids seem to run from room to room to room but, even if I'm in a hurry, I only walk briskly.)  I wrapped him in my arms and asked to see his head.

"Mooooooooooommmmmmm!" came the call from McKenzie.  "You let Miles use my camera and he just threw it at Carson's face!"

Whoops.  Sorry, Kenz.  And sorry, Carson.

Carson let me look at his forehead while he rubbed the tears from his eyes (sometimes I think he's thinking that if he just rubs his eyes hard enough, the tears will stop).  It looked fine... I couldn't even see a bump.  Weird, I thought.  "Well, it looks like everything is fine, Buddy," I said as I stroked his hair.  "I don't even see a bump."  He nodded and walked away, still rubbing his eyes but not crying anymore.  

A minute later he came into the bathroom I was cleaning to ask a question.  I looked up at him and immediately felt like Mother of the Year because, obviously, that deep gash that was crossing the bridge of his nose and dripping blood must have been there when I inspected his forehead for any bumps.  Guess I forgot to check for gashes.

Closer inspection revealed that the gash was deep enough to need a bit of attention and, thankfully, I remembered that my husband had brought home some Derma-Bond (think Super Glue for the skin) from the hospital for just such an occasion.  No ER visit for us!  Even so... Carson was feeling nervous.

He worried that the glue would sting the open wound and all I could say was, "I don't think it will, Bud" because I've never actually glued my skin back together.  McKenzie was delighted to take over the camera and capture Doctor Mommy in action.

Thankfully the cut closed perfectly when he scrunched up his nose... so his job was to scrunch his nose and not move.  Mine was to glue him back together.  Miles's was to sit in time-out.  Timothy's was to be happy without being held.  And Kenzie's was to capture the moment.  We all did awesome, if I do say so myself.  Fantastic shot, Kenz!

Genius who invented Derma-Bond?  You are a lifesaver.   Taking four children to the ER or Urgent Care is something I'd like to avoid.  Forever.