Injury Report

We added an extra step to the bedtime routine tonight. Alongside the pajamas and the reading, everyone took a dose of ibuprofen. I use medications sparingly because I’m weary of the side effects. Usually the kids only get ibuprofen when they’re obviously hurting, or when I desperately need them to sleep well. Tonight, everyone was obviously hurting, although encouraging them to sleep straight till morning sounded nice after all the screaming we endured tonight.

Tory suffered the first and most serious injury. It happened while everyone was taking a bath in the bathtub, and it’s never a good sign when the words “injury” and “bathtub” appear together. Tory was climbing on the sides of the bathtub. You can probably guess what happened from here. I certainly could guess what would happen.

The boys love to climb, and will climb on anything in the house. I always discourage them when I catch them climbing, and they always ignore my reminders not to climb on things. They climb on chairs, the fireplace, even the four-foot tall dresser in their room. The bathtub is no exception in spite of its status as wet, slippery, and hard. They like to climb on the ledge of the tub, balance their feet on that curved four-inch wide strip of porcelain, and bounce in a blatant disregard for their health. I always pull them back into water when I catch them climbing, and that’s exactly what I did tonight. Ian climbed onto the edge a split-second before Tory. While I obligingly pulled Ian into the water first, Tory lost his balance and fell chin-first into the edge. Mommy checked his mouth, and found that he’d bitten his tongue on impact, leading to an alarming amount of blood and wailing streaming from his mouth, but no real damage.

We comforted Tory for several minutes, convincing him that life was still worth living in spite of his searing mouth pain. We wound up planted on the sofa, trying to keep Tory still and his whimpering at a minimum while the other two kids roamed the living room. In front of us, Ian tripped on the area rug and fell face-first into the ottoman. The ottoman is stuffed and upholstered, which softened the blow, but his eye region landed on the edge of the wooden frame underneath the fabric. As mommy kept Tory calm, I went to work on Ian. The cheek around his left eye was swollen and might bruise tomorrow, but otherwise he seemed fine.

I kept the kids moving through the bedtime routine, and miraculously everyone survived the tooth brushings with no further injury. Reading time was not so fortunate.

You may wonder how a child could suffer an injury while reading. Sure those board books are hard, but no child age three and under could chuck one with enough force to cause injury.

It wasn’t the books I needed to watch out for; it was the dresser. Ian, in spite of his earlier face-plant on the ottoman, was climbing on the dresser. While I read to Abbie, he was hanging off the handles on the drawers. His weight finally broke the strap that anchors the dresser to the wall, toppling the dresser forward. I caught it on the way down, and Ian rolled out of the way. The dresser whacked Abbie’s thumb on its decent, though, and she was not happy that it was currently red and throbbing. It probably hurt, but her thumb clearly wasn’t badly injured. I gave her some ibuprofen anyway since we had the bottle out for the boys’ injuries anyway.