Bubble Wrap

You shouldn't report me to CPS--at least I don't think you should. There have been moments this week when I have wondered. Am I a neglectful parent? Or is my child just plain accident prone? Here is my week in review:

Monday, 3rd degree burns: We're having guests over for a BBQ. I'm in the kitchen making a salad. Matt goes out to light the grill. Elliot wanders out a few minutes later. I assume Matt is out there. He is not, he has gone back inside for something. One of our guests brings Elliot in to me a few minutes later, screaming with blisters on four fingers. The upside is of course that he probably won't ever use his fingers to check the status of the grill again.

Tuesday, near drowning: I take the boys to the pool. I'm playing catch with Elliot while he stands at the railing on the ramp in water to his waist. He throws the ball way past my head. I swim 6 feet away to grab the ball and turn to watch as he swings himself under the rail and sinks into the 4 foot deep water. I reach him just before the lifeguard does and drag him to the surface sputtering.

Thursday, head injury: We're taking a couple of neighbor kids home, everyone is attempting to pile into the minivan. An older boy opens the auto door slider on Elliot's side just as Elliot rounds the back of the van at high speed, crashing noggin first into the edge of the slider. Fortunately just barely splitting the skin over a nice raised goose-egg.

Saturday, double knee injury and near suffocation: I may have mentioned that bad knees run in the family. But it generally does not manifest itself until at least the teenage years. However, Elliot seems prone to twisting his knees constantly. Today we went to the Big Truck Event downtown to check out all the trucks the had on display for little boys to climb in and honk the horns--loudly and repeatedly. We were just about ready to go and I let the boys go in one of the blow-up jumping house things. All was fine until I heard crying and dragged Elliot out complaining of two twisted knees. As I was tending to him, someone pulled the plug out of the thing and the whole inflatable collapsed on the kids inside (Ethan included) as we frantically extracted them before they could suffocate.

I don't think they're too much worse for the wear. We wrapped both knees and he recovered enough to want to participate in the square dance tonight. Hopefully we've got all the accidents out of our system for a little while. Maybe I should wrap him in bubble wrap.