Scarface

Carder has more energy then I have ever seen--not to mention he is never short of ideas. So I have come to the realization that I may become quite acquainted with the local ER due to his shananagans. Thus far we have been pretty lucky, his only major blunder being the one when he split his eyebrow open when he was almost 1 1/2. I feel like a broken record telling him that he needs to calm down or to not do something because that is not safe as he pushes the boundaries trying to be the next Evel Knievel, constantly jumping on and off everything, building his contraptions to aid him in these endeavors, etc.

A few weeks back we were at Jake's parents' house for dinner.  Carder had asked to be excused before the rest of us were done eating, so he went into next room to do his goofing around when all the sudden we heard a crash. Georgann had seen it out of the corner of her eye, I guess he was spinning around on their wood floors with his socks on and his foot slipped out from under him and he fell into their solid wood side table (why is it always the most innocent of his shananagans that cause the most damage to him?!?).  He let out a scream which was bone-chilling to his Mom.  Carder is one of the toughest kids I have ever come across; he rarely cries, so when he does I know he has really been hurt and that there is probably some blood involved. Anyway we went over to him and checked him out and there was blood everywhere. It was a mouth wound, which tend to bleed alot but man oh man was there blood. His face was covered, Jakes shirt, my shirt etc. He had a cresent roll in his mouth at the time of the incident so when he let out his first cry all those flesh colored bread pieces that had been in his mouth were blood soaked and it looked like he had knocked out his teeth. Let's just say the queasiness set in a little bit at that point for me.  Well, to make a long story short it initially looked a lot worse then it actually was.  He had split right below his lip open (his teeth had punctured all the way through the skin from the inside of his mouth) but it was a pretty clean cut.  Georgann has a friend who lives up the street who is a nurse so she came over and checked it out. She steri-stripped it for us and called Primary Childrens to get a second opinon on if we should take him into the ER. Fortunately the cut was clean enough that the traumatic experience could end with the fall and not have to be worsened with having to get shots and stitches.  Poor boy, he was such a trooper. After we got the steri strips on (which had been preceded by A LOT of tears) he crashed in my arms so I was able to hold a cold pack to his wound while he slept.  For the next couple days he talked out of just one side of his mouth and really quietly so he wouldn't rip the area back open. His lip swelled up on the side so he looked like he was straight out of Fight Club or like he had some chewing tobacco stored in there.  After a few days he was back to his normal self, but he does have the scar to show for it...

(Why does it always have to be the face?!? First his eyebrow, now his lip/chin...If he keeps this up we are going to have to find a plastic surgeon to make friends with.)