Boo-Boo Badness

One of LO's keepsake books has an entry for "first boo-boo," so I've been mentally assessing all his bump and falls to see if they qualify. Technically his first painful accidents were all my doing. The first, when he was weeks old, I took him out of the swing and turned with him in my arms only to hit his head on the corner of a sofa table. The next when he was six or seven months old and he burned his hand on the baby food maker. Now that I've blogged about those, I'm sure someone will use them against me or him later in life! Still, neither those nor all the stumbles and ouchies he's had in the last year have really seemed to be "boo-boos."

Of course being a late walker probably staved them off longer than usual, but over the last three days, I think we finally have something that qualifies. Nope, not a typo, this boo-boo was three days in the making. First it was a small scrape, barely noticeable to my little guy who tripped, fell, then kept on going. Since we have almost no yard, we have taken to playing in the cul-de-sac down the street. Every tumble we take is on concrete or asphalt. So it wasn't long before I noticed my sweet baby's knee was bleeding. When we got home I dabbed it with a cool cloth, applied ointment and broke the seal on the cool Transformers band-aids. While the dabbing was met with some whimpers and tears, the band-aid was met with utter, no-holds- barred, melt down! I tried my best to calm him, and he did eventually settle. Hours later, he saw the band-aid again and was bothered by it. He managed to get the edge of it tucked under and melted down again. I thought the edge may have been digging into the scrape, so I took it off. Phew! The next day he fell again on our living room rug which is rather coarse. No tears from the fall or the fresh blood on his knee. Nope. Again a few whimpers while I cleaned it up and put on the ointment. This time I found a piggy band-aid. Showed it to him first, and.... melt down! I seriously had to hold, rock, and sing him for about 30 minutes. Any time he caught site of his knee, he lost it again! As of last night we had not put all these pieces together so we had no idea why he was so upset. We assumed some combination of hunger, being tired, and possibly teether.

So this morning I took him to large grassy commons area downtown so he could enjoy the awesome weather and run a bit. Unfortunately he preferred to run on the sidewalk than the grass. Yep, you guessed it! Fall number three opened that knee right up again and scuffed up his leg. He did not bat an eye and kept playing for another 10 minutes. When we got home I said "hey buddy, Mama's going to clean up your boo-boo, then we'll have lunch." MELT DOWN! No kidding, just the word "boo-boo" or (later) "knee" sent him over the edge. I performed the same routine of washing, medicating and, yes, applying the band-aid. This time the octopus band-aid was ok going on, but 45 minutes later when he saw it we had another melt down. The band-aid had to come off so he could recover.

Moral of the story: This boy does NOT like band-aids!