Life can be rough

We had our first significant injury happen in the addition yesterday. Like Matt and I both noted, though, this could have happened anywhere. Reuben's never been the most stable in his gross motor abilities (a large reason why he's getting two hours of physical therapy a week, plus carryover at home with what we know Brian's working on with him.) Yesterday while out going "bum bum" (hammering with his plastic hammer on the studs in the addition), he was going down the stairs and went "boom."

Ouch. Faces tend to bleed lots, so Matt rushed him over to the transfer window and together we held him while we wiped enough blood off his face and out of his mouth to see what we were dealing with. He must have landed on the left side of his nose. Most of the blood was coming from across the bridge where we're guessing he broke his nose, and there's a little scrape under his nose, too. This explains why there was blood coming out of both his nose and his mouth - so grateful that it wasn't anything worse!! He cried pretty hard, and showed his typical resistance to ice (though we got some ice time on it), and with some ibuprofen he quickly fell asleep in my lap until I had to transfer him to the couch so I could take Krassi to his pre-sedation physical. His hat's still on because we weren't too concerned about getting that off, unlike the coat which was covered with blood! and once he was asleep, we weren't going to mess with things. ;)

As I reflect on this, two things come to my mind. First of all, this is not the first time that Reu's had a bad tumble, and it's a reminder that this is just part of his life. As a parent it always hurts to see one of your children hurting, and knowing that pain like this is kind of hard-wired into Reuben's life makes it harder rather than easier to see it happen. My heart aches for this little boy of mine whose life is most likely going to include many more of these incidents, and there is little I can do to prevent it.

The other thing that was running through my head was that as Matt and I continue to design houses, that stair runs with landings partway are totally the way to go if there will be small children involved! If he had fallen a few steps down from the upper level in our existing house, he would have had a pretty long way to fall down. In the addition, being a few steps down when he fell meant that he was already halfway to the landing.

Today Mr. I Don't Feel Pain The Way The Rest Of You Do seems to be oblivious to the fact that he looks really beat up! Which in some ways, I suppose, is nice.