Black & Blue Christmas

The other night all was calm, all was bright (for about 5 minutes).

Just got home, about to make dinner, my husband was at work, and I was washing up Vivian in the bathroom. I heard Ben walk down the hallway to the stairs.

The next thing I heard made my heart stop. A stumble, a loud THUNK, and a wail.

I flew down the stairs to see what was the matter.

Ben got up from the floor a little dazed and turned around. When he stood up I saw the biggest black goose-egg on his forehead that I have ever seen. The mother of all goose eggs. How did that appear so quickly?

He had tripped on the stairs and flew headfirst into the corner of the kitchen wall. (I now know this because he has since re-enacted the event several times for us without the actual hitting the wall part, of course.)

Ouch. is an understatement .

He stopped crying pretty quickly. Usually we treat your average bump with a "boo boo monkey' cold pack and some kisses it to make it better. But no, this one was in a whole other category of bumps. This one was alarming, it could've had it's own area code.

I grabbed a boo boo monkey and he actually let me hold it on him while I called the nurse-line.

I concentrated on Ben and his bump and listening to hold music waiting for the nurse. Trying to be calm and not freak out. Then I noticed Vivian was being a little too quiet while I was distracted.

I peered around the corner into the kitchen.

There she was. She had managed to get ahold of a tub of hot cocoa powder, dumped it across the kitchen floor and was laying down in the middle of the powder making hot cocoa snow angels.

I turned my attention back to Ben, Looked at his eyes. Big black pupils. That's not good.

I immediatedly hung up the phone, dusted off Vivian, and got their winter gear back on to head off to urgent care. I'm a err on the side of caution person, and was hoping this wasn't a serious head injury. Best to get this one checked out.

We arrived in the waiting room. Luckily, I still hadn't cleaned out the car from a recent road trip and had an activity bag at the ready to distract them.

(Hooray for lazy cleaning! Note to self : always have a packed activity bag at the ready. You'll never know when you're going to need it.)

I sat in the waiting room and picked dehydrated mini-marshmallows out of Vivian's hair while she looked at books and Ben doodled on a pad of paper.

His humor was lost on me at the moment. Freaked out mom. Not a good audience.

He checked his eyes, asked him questions, checked his balance, hopped on one foot. Then Ben started bouncing and running around the exam room.

"Okay - well, it's good to see he's not lethargic." Then he looked at me in the eyes. "He's going to be fine, you were right to get this checked out. His pupils were dilated because of the adreneline. Luckily It's just a hematoma. Just to warn you the blood is going to drain down his face. Don't be alarmed, but he'll get some black eyes. It's going to look worse before it get's better. Come back if he throws up more than once, or just starts not acting like himself."

He was right, a few days later, my little porcelain-skinned boy is now a technicolor sight to behold. He will surely be the most vibrant boy in the preschool Christmas pageant this week.

His eyes are now striped with red, green, yellow, black and blue. It absolutely hurts to look at him. Yes, in all of our Christmas photos, he'll look like a prize fighter. When we look back on them, they will now be " Christmas 2009 the year Ben fell down the stairs."

But I had to stop and laugh to myself. She was doing snow angels in chocolate - seriously, how awesome is that?

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For further information on "goose eggs" here are two good links to reference. They have helpful guidelines on when to go to the doctor and when to just apply the boo boo monkey and kisses. If you're concerned, I'd recommend going to the doctor.

Dr. Sears head injuries.

Mayo Clinic.