It Must Be Thursday

My kids are clumsy.

When I was a kid, I was clumsy too. In fact, I'm still clumsy... hmmm...

Either way, my kids are clumsy. They don't call them 'toddlers' for nothing. Splat is standing all of the time, and she can walk along furniture by herself. Couple that with her having a... hands on... older sister, and she spends a lot of her time falling down.

Shake'n'Bake is more steady on her feet. She can run and jump and somersault and climb, and because she can do all of these things, it means that she must.

She runs everywhere, jumps on her bed/the couch/the floor/my stomach/my bed/the walls...okay, the last one was made up...somersaults all over the place, and does backflips off the couch.


O_o


Yes, backflips. They're really more of a backwards somersault, but they make some people very uncomfortable.

Regardless, she too spends a lot of time impacting herself off of objects. Causing bruises. And bumps. And cuts. And every other normal thing that happens to children.

The one major factor of this equation? Shake'n'Bake's dad and I are not together, so although the bruises seem normal to me, he may find them suspicious or concerning since he did not see them happen. (At this point I don't even know where most of her bruises come from. If she doesn't make a big deal about an injury, I don't ask.)

Over a year ago, Shake'n'Bake fell off my bed and landed on a wooden toolbox that I had built. With her back. What was a wooden toolbox doing next to my bed, you may ask? Well, I had no garage, no storage, no door on the hall closet, and no seperate floor. My toolbox (filled with sewing supplies, nonetheless!) was placed next to my bed, with my filing cabinet closing it off from Shake'n'Bake's reach.

Unless of course, she were to FALL ON IT WITH HER BACK.


O_o


Ridiculous.

She developed a huge bruise in the center of her back, that blackened and purpled and greened, then later yellowed. It looked awful! She went to her dad's house that weekend, and lo and behold, he asked me shortly thereafter if she was being abused.


o_o


'Oh yeah, it was me. It's a good thing you asked though, or I never would have told you.'

Dumbass.




Boyfriend and I now have a running joke that every Thursday before Shake'n'Bake goes to her dad's house, she will injure and bruise herself in some way.

It helps to keep the illusion that maybe I'm beating her.

The good news is: I'm not beating her! And, at some point she started bringing home some significant bruises from her dad's house too.



If a bruise is big enough, or concerning looking, then we will mention it to each other while she is changing hands. Most of the time, we just leave it. Lord knows, she has enough bruises.



This? This is nothing.