New Parent Survival Tip: Bactine & old mateless socks

When Bobbin started walking... oh wow... like 14 months ago! I started stocking the house and diaper bag and car with

- Portable first-aid kits containing sting-free antiseptic wipes, bandaids, and antibiotic ointment
- little travel-sized containers of Kid-friendly foaming hand sanitizer
- little tubes of kid-friendly no-sting boo-boo cream
- travel-sized spray bottles of bactine
- fun bandaids of all sizes (Dora, Elmo, and flourscent pink and green)
- hello kitty ice packs (cause she won't hold it to her owie unless it's soft and interesting)
- gauze pads
- Tweezers (for slivers and thorns :-))

and I cannot tell you HOW OFTEN I've been grateful to have these supplies within arms reach no matter where we are :-). I've restocked a few times. Let's just leave it at that.

Bobbin fell on the sidewalk in front of her school yesterday as we were heading to the car. Scraped her left knee something awful. Completely raw. It had to have hurt. I got out my kit, cleaned her up, and got a giant toddler-knee-sized bandaid to cover it till we got home. She cried bloody murder all the way home. She did, however, enlighten me between sobs that it wasn't so much that her owie hurt, which it did, but also told me "Bobbin fall down on sidewalk at school. Get hurt. Really scary". In other words, there was a fairly large element of fear associated with the crying as well. Bobbin realized she can get hurt.

As with the night following fat-lip incident, last night she slept absolutely HORRIBLY. And thus, so did we. And I'm thinking again that it isn't just the pain or discomfort of sleeping with a scabbed up knee that caused the restlessness, but it was also fear. I think that both incidents caused her to have bad dreams. It would make sense. And so when she wakes up from these dreams she's fearful to go back to sleep because she doesn't want them to happen again. Hell, I still have dreams like that on occasion.

This morning the knee still hurt, and was still "skeh-ee". Yet she insisted on wearing her "Pretty pah-tee dess" to school. Without long pants underneath to cover her owie. And she refused a bandaid. She didn't like how it rippled when she bent her knee. And so in a burst of sheer mom ingenuity, I located an old sock of hers that had long lost its mate, cut off the foot, and slid it up over her knee to protect her scrape and give her a little more comfort and coverage than a standard bandaid could offer. It worked!

Bactine has proven to be a small miracle too. I may have to buy stock in the company. While she hates anything touching her owie, immediately after a couple of sprays of this stuff on her knee, she's jumping around like nothing happened, running, laughing, playing. Every once in a while she stops and points to her knee and says "Bobbin have owie. Owie hurt. Bobbin fall down sidewalk hurt self at school" and then she's off again.

Bactine and old socks. Even if they're only crawling, stock up now. You'll be grateful for it when that first fall happens.

Oh, and I still get "Bobbin fall down bump mouf" every time we pass the flower garden store that was the scene of the fat-lip incident. Every time. Twice a day. And now we've added "Bobbin fall down sidewalk bump knee get owie" every time we walk on the sidewalk in front of her school. Twice a day. Every day.

Good to know I'm helping her create such fond, long-lasting memories of her childhood surroundings. I can just picture a day in the distant future: Bobbin Jr. in the back of the car in car seat, and Bobbin in the passenger seat as I drive them to the grocery store during one of their yearly trips to visit "Grandma and Grandpa": "And right there... see, Bobbin Jr? That's where Mommy fell down and bumped her mouth because Grandma let her play on the wooden climbing structure while it was raining. And there... over there is Mommy's old daycare, and that sidewalk is where Mommy fell down and scraped her knee really bad while she was running to give Grandma a big hug... and over there, that's where..."

Yeah... Great ;-)

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