A Wonderful Way

... to start our holiday.

At approximately 8:50 this morning I told Arabella I was headed upstairs to take a shower and began to walk up, and she shrieked "I want a big hug!" This was followed by a huge thud, and a moment of silence, then a scream. I ran back to the diningroom, where Arabella was standing and crying that she had hit her chin. It looked ok, so I tilted her head up to give her a kiss, and that's when I saw it. She had split her chin open, a little over an inch long, and very deep. Deep, as in, I was seeing layers of skin, fatty tissue and darker muscle underneath. And of course lots of blood. I knew in that instant we were looking at several stitches. I stayed as calm as I could, got her a paper towel, told her to hold it to her chin, then ran off to get socks and shoes for us both. Sabine was still in her sleep sack, which I whipped off and popped her in the car seat in a t-shirt and diaper (no socks, no pants, thank goodness for the bunting) I wore my pajamas, which fortunately don't look too pajama-like. I called the doctor to let them know, and we drove off to the urgent care place where Michael had his hand stitched up nearly 5 years ago after stabbing himself with a box cutter.

In case you are wondering why I didn't take her to the emergency room, we are exactly halfway between the hospital and the urgent care center, and when we visited the emergency room in May for Arabella's head injury, it took well over two hours, and cost $200 for them to put a band-aid on it. I didn't want to know what we would end up paying for actual stitches.

Sabine screamed the whole way to the urgent care, then calmed down once we got there. A sign of how much Arabella was hurting was that she barely spoke the entire drive. Arabella was pretty calm until the doctor took out the probe to see how deep it was. The doctor ended up putting her in a velcro baby straight jacket to keep her still, with the nurse holding her head and me reminding her to close her eyes. there was much screaming, I had a hideously good view of the action, and it took 6 stitches to close it up.

For reference, it is exactly in the same spot that my mom has a scar from busting her chin open as a child. 6 stitches, looking like a little goatee. The Man said at least we already got he Christmas pictures taken.