A Sad Rite of Passage

Not all is always well in Matherland. Yesterday, she took a hard fall off the top of her diaper table onto the floor. She landed face-first. I had been reaching for a shirt from her drawer after changing her, and didn't realize she was off-balance.

Mather and I were alone with together, with Emily far away in Half Moon Bay. The thud was, for lack of a more palatable word, sickening, and Mather was crying almost instantly. That was actually a good thing, a quick confirmation that she never lost consciousness. I held her in my arms and tried to soothe her, but she was horribly upset. She did manage to choke out her desire for both her binky and her sleepy bear, so I grabbed those from the crib.

After a little while, the pace of the crying slowed a bit. However, she was clearly groggy and not herself, and one eye was starting to swell up and blacken. After consulting with Em on the phone, we were off to Kaiser. Instead of going to the ER, I went straight to pediatrics. That worked out great, since they slipped us in between two of Dr. Newell's scheduled appointments. She's our regular pediatrician and we love her. She did a great job of keeping Magoo calm while she had to poke and prod her. She's a big reason we've stuck with Kaiser the last couple years.

While Mather was still a bit addled, she was slowly snapping out of her funk. When Dr. Newell needed to see her walk, I was nervous - I hadn't let Mather try to stand on her own two legs yet. But with the promise of a toy chest at the end of the hall, our adventurous girl was off to claim her treasure, clad only in her diaper (dignity is a foreign concept). She walked as well as she ever does (there's always a bit of a wobble...) and even wove around nurses, strollers and other kids.

We've kept a close eye on her since the fall to watch for any signs of head trauma, but so far, so good. The black eye hasn't really darkened or gotten worse. When Momily came home from work, Mather pretty calmly told her that she had a "big owie". This morning she was pretty oblivious to the injury, even when she looked in the mirror (she thought her belly button was far more interesting than some silly bruise).

In many ways, injuries like this are a rite of passage, as tough as they are to witness. Mather survived her first cold (it came at six months old), her fair share of lesser falls, and her first cut (as an early crawler she came across a food processor blade and thought it was a cool looking toy). Obviously, it's a huge reminder to be more careful when Mather is high up, but in the end, I might have been more upset and affected than she was.

And hey, I've already had two black eyes in 2008. It runs in the family.

We've got a lot of other updates we should cover soon -- we've moved, for one, after successfully closing the sale of our Page Street flat. We've started our first experimentations in potty training, and just celebrated our anniversary. So we'll write about all those things soon.