Head injury

A unique thing about Christian that you may not know is that on any given day he will likely be sporting a number of cuts and bruises in varying stages of healing on his head. It has become sort of a "normal" thing in our house to hear a thud followed by a screech, followed by Cohen running to tell me or Stefan that Christian "hurt his head." Again. And of course, every time, my heart leaps up into my throat and I wonder if this time it is really and truly serious.

When these injuries first began to take place right about the time Christian became mobile (It seems he went pretty much from a squalling baby lying on his back to running and climbing--altogether skipping the crawling and toddling stage, although I'm sure it was in there somewhere), I felt like surely we must be failing in propper supervision and correction of the boy. It certainly hadn't been our experience with Cohen, who although has had his share of little boy injuries in his 3 and a half years, just doesn't tend to always be hurting himself. But it seems we are having to adjust to the idea that no amount of supervision for our youngest son is going to be able to protect him from the trouble he gets himself into. The boy just does not STOP! His combination of curiousity and boldness seem to be more of a factor than any amount of supervision. Which is scary, becuase I can only imagine what will be interesting and motivating to him at the age of 8...or 14 for that matter!

We all had to learn the hard way to insist on icing whenever Christian came up with a new "owee" (We had one particular bruise that took months for the coloring to subside!) As you can imagine, a toddler is not too keen on having ice on his head for 20 minutes. So it has sort of become a family affair. Whenever Christian hurts his head, we all got together and take turns holding the ice on while we try to entertain and distract him by singing or reading books or talking. Cohen has gotten good at helping out and Stefan and I frequently pass the job off to him.

Oh, son! You wear your mamma out! Good thing you're so cute.