Day 4 Tears, Tears and More Tears

Day 4 Tears, Tears and More Tears*

 Yesterday’s blog was way too long – sorry about that, so will endeavor to keep this one shorter.

I had some early morning duties settling Francis back to sleep at 4am, and then again at 4:15am! I thought we might get Mammy off to work on time, but time slid away from us again.

After Ananda’s departure, we had some guitar time and then I hopped in the shower whilst Francis happily played with his toys – i.e. empty shampoo bottles and toilet roll tubes in the bathroom. Once in our walk-in cube-like shower I did notice one possible drawback – what would I do if Francis plonked himself on the other side of the door, that, of course, opens outwards? Thankfully towards the end of the shower he did migrate to the other side, thus allowing me to escape.

We had some reading and playing time after that – then I decided to do a little bit of tidying up in the kitchen. The kitchen at our old place was pretty child friendly with all closed in cabinets. The only thing to really watch for was a hot oven door if we were baking.  In contrast this new kitchen is a child’s playground; AKA a parent’s nightmare. There’s two entrances to it, lots of nooks and crannies and the microwave space, for some reason is at adults shin height – or Francis’ head height.  We have mentioned to each other that it’s getting time to put up some gates to prevent his inquisitive mind getting the better of us.

At our old place we stored our chopping boards on top of, and to the side of, the microwave and we’ve done the same thing here.  Last night he pulled a wee small red one out from the side and it landed on his poor wee tootsies. Some short lived tears last night. You might think that he AND us would learn our lessons from that, but unfortunately no.

Anyway, I was standing right next to the microwave arranging some Tupperware to aliquot his soup from last night into, when I hear an almighty clatter and see a big wooden chopping board, bouncing on the floor. When Francis is really upset or hurt, such an incident is usually followed by about 20 seconds of silence as he stops breathing, turns bright red and then lets out a blood-curdling scream of sadness.

Today was no different. Except it was.

Because his crying and shrieking lasted for a good 20 minutes, and I was really worried after about 5 minutes that he had really hurt himself.  I didn’t see what had happened or what parts of his body, if any, the board had hit on it’s way down, and as I comforted him on the sofa, I did palpate all his major bones and limbs and  extremities to see if there was any places where he would obviously wince. There appeared to be none, but the crying went on for way longer than normal.

Maybe it was the shock, maybe it was because it was nap time, maybe it was because he was ready for Daddy Milkies, but even a couple of renditions of Slinky Malinky, would only partially stem the crying.

Food can be a great comfort to people in distress, so I applied the same logic to Francis, grabbed some liquid gold and managed to get him settled for his morning nap. I have to admit I was pretty chocked up and lumpy-in-the-throaty when he finally fell asleep in my arms. Watching your child be that upset is way worse than being that upset yourself.

Francis napped for 90 minutes, and when he woke up he was inconsolable again. So I stripped him down and examined his whole body again – yet again finding nothing.  I popped him back into his clothes and it was only when I was putting his socks on that I noticed his big toe of his left foot had a nasty swelling and bruising and the toe nail was blackening.  When I tried to touch it he winced and yelled. I got a damp cloth and an ice cube and was able to apply ice to it for about 5 minutes – but even that process seemed unbearable to him.

Ananda was coming home at lunch time again, so I called her and she came home a bit earlier. We tried to see if he would crawl, but he wouldn’t, not properly anyway, and was upset when he tried to stand.  We gave him a quick squirt of Neurofen and then discussed what to do.

We decided to have lunch and then take him to Urgent Care where we saw a very nice young Dr. By that time I think the Neurofen had kicked in and he was fairly happy to allow the Dr. to examine his tootsie. Upshot was that babies bones are so flexible at that age, that doing an X-ray to see if it was broken was not worth it, as they would not be able to do anything anyway, even if it was broken.

By the time we got home for an afternoon snack – tea and toast for Mammy and Daddy and pe-ana for Francis – he seemed much happier and the swelling was greatly reduced. I guess at that age his body is just churning out new cells at such a rate that he’ll heal real fast.

* I say Tears, but Francis has actually never-ever had tears. Is that something to worry about ?

I had planned to write out the words to the Pants song, but I'll do that tomorrow instead.

So Day #4 completed, here are the numbers for your lottery cards

No poos – Oh dear – could be a Poo-nami warning for tomorrow

1716g – the weight of the chopping board

Moving boxes emptied -2

48143km -Distance flown by one of said boxes – London- Auckland-San Bruno(Ca) – Cambridge(Ma) – Oakland (Ca)-Hamilton …… I guess I’ve got my monies worth from re-using that one!

40075 km – circumference of the earth