The Number Field

On their way to the gym yesterday morning, Jenny and Elena stopped to get the mail first. While Jenny got out her key to open the mailbox, Elena took a few steps down the sidewalk in the other direction. Jenny only took her eyes off Elena for a second or two, but when she looked back Elena was in the middle of a nosedive.

Elena still doesn't lift her feet very much when she walks, so she probably stumbled on a seam in the concrete sidewalk. Normally she catches herself, but this time that didn't quite work out, and she scraped her nose and chin. The scrape wasn't too bad, so Jenny cleaned it up and they continued on their way to the gym. However, when Jenny checked on her, her hair had gotten stuck in the wound--it was gross, but they cleaned it up again and all was well.

Jenny checked Elena over afterwards to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. She found that Elena has several little bumps and bruises that we hadn't even noticed on her knees and elsewhere. She's a trooper; she hasn't complained about any of them.

Last Sunday I had my own traumatic "I should have been watching better" moment. We were having dinner at our friends' house, and Elena was playing on the stairs. I was right there with her, but she's normally so good on the stairs that I took a moment to look something up on my iPod. That was all it took for her to stand up and do a backdive off the second step, banging her head pretty hard. We treated that injury with an ice pack at the impact site, and ice cream to distract her.

Elena loves to explore and try new things. As she picks up speed, I'm sure she'll get more scrapes and bruises for us to kiss away. For now, she's decided that instead of going to the gym, she should be mommy's personal trainer at home.

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