She Was Finally Allowed To Cry

One of my many mantras to the kids is “if there’s no blood, it’s not worth crying about.”

A typical conversation on any given weekend:

“Mom, CootieBoy hit me on the head!”

“Are you bleeding?”

“No.”

“Then stop crying.”

*waves* Mother of the Year, everybody!!

However, yesterday after church she was allowed to cry. She was in the backyard running around in her flip-flops. The flip-flops are new and while she is generally okay wearing them, they’ve made her a bit clumsy sometimes. So yesterday she was in the backyard with CootieBoy and Uncle Peter, and she was jumping on the stepping stones. Somehow she tripped and managed to catch her big toenail on the stone.

And yes, there was blood. Not a lot, but enough to freak her out. The injury is entirely on the top of her toe – part of the nail came off, but yet is still attached. She came into the house screaming and I whisked her up to my bathroom to begin determining the damage. Fortunately I think she was more scared than in pain, because she didn’t increase the crying when I was cleaning it, other than to express concern about the antiseptic wash causing it to sting (it didn’t). We put a huge gauze pad around it, bound it up in tape, wiped her tears away, put her in some soft socks, and she spent most of the day on the sofa.

This morning we changed from the bandage to a couple of large bandaids. The nail hasn’t turned blue yet – I expect it will do that in the next couple of days before falling off (yes, I believe it will fall off). She had no pain whatsoever when I touched the nail to determine how she was doing.

But no more flip flops for her for a while. Those things are dangerous.