A rough weekend

After several separate events this weekend, Evan's now sporting some new scratches, bumps and bruises.  While this time I can say I don't feel so guilty that I caused any of these new boo boos (unlike when he fell down the deck stairs), it's still pretty painful for John and I to witness Evan slipping, falling, and running into things leaving him marred and in tears.

Friday

It was just about Evan's bedtime and John had just got Evan into his pajamas.  I was in our bedroom and Evan had escaped his bedroom and was making his way down the half flight of stairs to our room. I saw him coming down (on his tummy backwards, like he's learned how to do) and was on my way to retrieve the little escapee, when in a flash of an eye he stopped on the second bottom step and stood up. As John approached him from above and me from below, perhaps our calling out to him startled him and he stepped backward only to not have anything to step on.  He fell toward the wooden rail, but I was close enough to him that I was able to rush the extra distance and scoop him up.  Thus, while John and I were both terrified, the only injury he sustained was a finger jab to his leg (from my rush to catch him) and possibly a bruised ego.  Either way, John and I've decided that we will no longer let Evan practice his stairs, as we just can't handle another close call like that.

Shortly after this, I had taken Evan back to his bedroom, and to prevent him from escaping again I closed the door.  As soon as I put him down he was rushing to get out of the room, so when I closed the door it clearly upset him.  In fact, it upset him so much that he decided to take his anger out on the door (perhaps hoping it would open if he put enough force into it?).  He walked forcefully up to the door, raised his arms up high, and slammed his fists against the door.  Unfortunately, he also brought his face in too close, and thus it got slammed into the door too, leaving him with a busted slightly fat bottom lip.

Saturday

Luckily we didn't have any more accidents on Saturday like we had the previous night.  Rather, Evan's troubles this day all happened during his sleep.  First, Evan got some very noticeable scratches on his right cheek.  While I can't say exactly how he got them, he went to sleep for his morning nap sans scratches, and then had them when he woke up.  My best guess is he went to rub or scratch his face and his nails were just a little too long or jagged and they got him good.  We had just filed down his left hand's fingernails the night before, but he never holds still long enough to do both hands, so his right hand was still in need of some grooming.

Evan's been doing so well sleeping through the night for us lately that we had almost forgotten what it was like to be woken by a crying baby...until last night.  He woke up at midnight and while he was fairly easy to coax back to sleep, he continually woke up crying for the next hour and a half.  Granted, he is working on his 7th tooth now (he hadn't had a tooth come in for at least a month, so we had a short break from teething), and he's fighting a bit of a cold.  So it's hard to say which of those two things were the cause, or even if it was something else.  Nonetheless, it was the first night in a month or so that I can recall having a hard time with him overnight.

Sunday

Today put the icing on the cake, so to speak, when it comes to Evan's recently accumulated injuries.  Since he was already sporting a split lip and a scratched right cheek, I think his left cheek was feeling left out.  The story goes like this...I was in the kitchen most of the afternoon, making use of the last of our garden tomatoes (which he had ripened in the house due to the frost a few weeks ago).  I put all four varieties that we grew into one pot of fresh tomato soup.  I also used up our butternut squash for a winter squash bisque, and made some chicken enchiladas for our dinner and a batch to take to a friend who just had a baby.

Anyway, while I was playing Betty Crocker, John and Evan were watching football and playing in the living room.  When I heard the bang, I knew something had gone seriously wrong.  I have come to learn Evan's cries, and the one I heard coming from the living room is one that makes my gut wrench.  Evan had slipped on one of our throw pillows that was on the floor and went face first into his Leap Frog musical table.  He loves to take the throw pillows off the couch and sometimes walk/crawl over them, and this one was a silky (aka slippery) material that he'd laid right next to the table.  His left cheek took the brunt of the force, and immediately had a blue bump forming.  We tried to ice his cheek off and on after the accident, but he didn't like the cold pack, however I knew he needed it so we kept trying.  So far, he doesn't have a complete shiner from it, but there was some swelling around the bottom of his left eye, so it's possible that by morning it'll be a full blown black eye.  He seemed to act pretty normal the rest of the day, but anytime he hits his head I get worried since head injuries can be so serious.

As John told me earlier, "it's the worst feeling in the world" seeing your child hurt.  Thus, as you may imagine, John and I are both feeling pretty crummy tonight knowing our little baby has been hurt.  After each incident, we agreed that we'd change something to prevent it from happening again--not let him go up/down stairs anymore, not let him leave the pillows on the floor anymore, etc--but I know we can't prevent them all.  In fact, this weekend's accidents are just proof of that, and yet how am I supposed to be at ease watching him toddle around knowing he could lose his balance at any time and hit his head on the nearby (fill in the blank)?  The answer so far is that I can't.  My heart seizes up every time I see him falter, and especially after this rough weekend, you better believe John and I have our guard up.  Evan's just too precious to us to let him get any more bumps and bruises.  Does anyone know if they make baby body armor?