Banged and Bruised

It was an interesting day around here. By bedtime, I was putting both boys in bed with noses that were still running a little blood here and there from time to time.

Yesterday afternoon, we heard Zach scream out and then heard him start crying. Anita was in the kitchen, and I at my desk in the den. Immediatley I heard Anita yell for me and so I leaped through the den and streaked for the living room. She was holding Zach's face as I came through and told me to get a washcloth. I went and grabbed two. Threw her a dry one, while I got a wet one ready. I then went to find paci, so that it could hopefully calm Zach down once we got some of the bleeding stopped.

Well, once we got Zach calmed down, we brought Conner back out of his room. Anita had sent him there, because she knew immediately from his reactions he had done something, but she didn't have time to figure out what it was yet. We asked him what happened and he said, "I accidentally threw a book and hit Zach in the face." Wow, yah, now there's a good accident for you. He hit him hard enough that he was bleeding from his mouth and nose at the same time.

When Conner came back out of his bedroom, he had a big handful of stuffed animals (his babies) for Zach. He said, "I brought them for Zach to make him feel better." So, we knew he felt bad and that he truly was sorry, but we still had to talk to him about what happened of course. We didn't feel like we could truly punish him at that point though, and watching him sit there and look at Zach while we described what happened to Zach and how bad it hurt Zach, was obviously punishment enough.


Later that night, Zach was back playing in Conner's room and Conner was out talking to me in the living room. I was trying to watch something really quick on tv and was sitting on the floor between our big chair and ottoman. Conner was on the other side of the ottoman and kept ducking behind hit and asking, "Can you see me?" I kept looking at the tv and pretending not to be paying attention and then I'd turn my head really fast and catch him looking over the top and say, "See ya!"

As Conner did this for a little while, he was getting too wound up and a little too wild with it. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I'm guessing that instead of actually going up and down, he was sitting on his knees and leaning down really fast.
Well, he jerked down really fast and then I heard a *thunk* as his face hit the wood frame of the ottoman. He popped right back up holding his face in silence, and then about a half second later, there came the scream of pain. He didn't even hesitate though, he turned and bolted for the bathroom, and while holding his face with one hand, he opened the door with the other and jumped up on the stool to lean over the sink. The minute he did so and let go of his nose, blood just POURED out into the sink. It took probably 5-10 minutes with a very cold compress to get the bleeding stopped.

During the process of getting the bleeding to stop, Conner started getting really upset and he was still crying pretty good and he said, "I want blue doggy." which is typical. Then he said, "I'm tired." which is appropriate because he didn't really have much of a nap yesterday and it was about 7:30pm. Then, I was talking to him and said, "I tell you... this family. You boys have a had a rough day." and Conner said, "Uh huhhh. We're just a bloody family." ...HAHA.. oh me. I had to laugh at that one. He then said, "We have 2 boys bleeding and 2 people not bloody - you and mommy are not bloody."

So ends the night of fun. I walked around for the next 30 minutes wiping up bloody runny noses with a tissue .... on both boys! Zach's incident happened much earlier in the day too, but as his nose ran, there was still a little blood in it. I guess Conner whopped him pretty good. Well, sometimes paybacks don't always come by the hand of the wronged. Sometimes I guess, you just do them to yourself.