"Why, I could wallop you all day with this surgical two-by-four without ever knocking you down."

I’m used to the boys hurting them selves. With a pair of wobbly feet to stand on, and a sadistic sister who enjoys bowling for brothers, they hit the ground a lot. They fall, they scream in agony, maybe a few brain cells die in the impact, and life goes on. Sometimes they show wounds after falling, but they fall so many times every day, I lose track of which contusion corresponds to which collision.

That makes Ian’s forehead shiner a little disturbing. If you scroll down to yesterday’s post, you’ll see a picture of him enjoying cake in spite of the wound festering on his forehead. It’s the type of bruise that will make Ian wonder why the authorities let such a negligent parent keep custody of his children when he flips through his baby pictures 20 years from now. I honestly have no idea where it came from.

I believe he developed it sometime Wednesday, at least that’s the first time I remember someone asking about it. Ellie noticed it when she came home that night and quizzed me about its origins. She wanted to hear about a dangerous hard blunt object laying about the house that could be easily removed so it never harmed another child, or at the very least a vaguely amusing anecdote about Abbie knocking him over on her way to the kitchen for lunch. Instead the best I could do was give her a vague answer about falling that probably wouldn’t satisfy the child welfare workers either.

I remember he took a nasty tumble while taking a bath. That would explain the bruise, but not the abrasion on top of the bruise. Our bathtub’s Modus Operandi is more about blunt injury resulting in contusions or worse, not scrapes. It looked like Ian fell and whacked his head on carpet, or possibly the children have been watching too much professional wrestling.

I shrugged it off, confident it would disappear in a day or two like every other blow the boys have taken over the past year. It didn’t disappear, though. In fact, it looked worse as the days passed. More people asked me about the bruise, hoping to hear a tragic story about a young man helplessly hitting the ground. I had to give the “I don’t know” answer to all of them.

A couple days ago I discovered at least part of the problem. I entered their room to pull Ian from his crib after naptime, and found him scooting around the crib, butt in the air, forehead dragging on the mattress scab-side down. I picked him up, and found the wound rubbed freshly raw.

Shortly after I stuck a bandage to his forehead. I don’t like putting bandages on babies because they could pose a choking hazard if the baby removes it. I especially don’t like using bandages in on our children because Abbie will pick at it. I decided it was worth trying, and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Ian lacks the dexterity to remove it. Even better was seeing Abbie poke it a few times and leave it alone. She’ll point to it, and point to her forehead, convinced that she must have one on her head too. I’ll tell her it’s an “owie,” and she’ll point back and forth between foreheads trying to find another one. I think she likes the bandages. Hopefully she doesn’t figure out that she only needs to keep pushing her brothers over to ensure that they continuously appear.