Chicks Dig Scars, Right?

Spring has sprung, and it is a beautiful thing. I enjoyed the snow for a little bit, but then I was ready for it to be gone. I was ready for it to be gone long before it was ready to be gone. But, joy of all joys, the past several days it's been sunny and clear and almost warm. Yesterday we hit actually warm (I think we hit the mid 60s, I know it's 65 today) and so there was great rejoicing as we hustled down the back stairs to play in the yard.

The doodle loves to run in the yard. I'm always out there with him, but I don't hover over his every footstep - it's fenced and there's relatively little that can hurt him. It's a pretty typical back yard. So I was sitting on the grass yesterday and he was running here and there, periodically zipping over to sit in my lap and say hi before taking off again, and he decided it was time to come tag up with me so he started zipping my way and about a foot out, his feet got ahead of his brain and he started to fly forward.

Now, he trips when he gets going too fast. Mostly he rolls and laughs and finds it hilarious and gets up and starts zipping again. But this was one of those moments when time seemed to move in stop animation. I saw him start to trip and then frame by frame as I reached out to try and grab him, I watched in horror as he smacked into the corner of the fence post just before my fingers brushed his sleeve.

And then time stood still for a moment. I'm fairly certain that everything also was silent except the frantic beating of my heart. And then he began to cry.

I scooped him up and time resumed its normal pace and I flew into the house with him, blood pouring down his face, and grabbed a handful of paper towels, zipped them under the faucet and pressed them to his head for a moment. This intensified the howling. So I peeked beneath them and had an internal debate that felt like it took an eternity, though in reality it was about two seconds.

Do I call an ambulance? By the time they got there I could be at the hospital. Should I call my sister? By the time she got there I could be at the hospital. Should I go to urgent care rather than the ER? I'm not sure where an urgent care is and even if I knew where one was, would they be able to do what needed to be done or would they just send us to the ER? ER it is.

I grabbed my purse, strapped him in his car seat and zipped to the hospital as fast as the car would take me, all the while letting him know that a) he was ok, it would be fine and b) please hold the papertowels to your head. And he did...just not to the side that was bleeding. But he was very good about pressing them to the non injured side of his head.

On the positive side, noon on a Monday is apparently a good time to go to the ER. And also a bleeding head wound is very quickly seen to. On the other hand, I had hoped to make it to school age before my baby needed stitches.

He was a trooper and the nurses were lovely. At the end of the day, they strapped him in the papoose thing (boy did he hate that!) and he got 5 stitches, one on the inside (because it was deep enough at the very middle to see the bone) and 4 to close the top. They said to try and leave it uncovered, but he rubs at it, so I figure covered is better than ripped out stitches.

As we pulled into the garage after our little ordeal he said, "Go outside and play, mommy?"Ah to be as resilient as a two-year-old.