It Was Only a Matter of Time...

Yes, that's right, we took our first trip to Urgent Care to get stitches (staples, actually). Who was the lucky little boy? Ethan. I was almost kind of expecting it from him lately. It seems that for the last month he's been falling off of, running into, and tripping over EVERYTHING. How did it happen? Well, I'm not totally sure, because I didn't see it happen, but I think he fell off a chair in the kitchen, and hit his head on the edge of the seat on the way down. Matthew and Ethan were sitting at the table putting together puzzles(a nice quiet activity, right?), and I was putting laundry away, when I heard the crash, but no crying. That's when I dropped everything and RAN to the kitchen. I knew it was bad when he hadn't caught his breath enough to cry, yet, but when he did, it was one of the worst cries that I had ever heard. I picked him up, and that's when I noticed the blood on the floor. It didn't take long to figure out where it was coming from...head wounds tend to bleed a lot. I took one look at it, and I knew that he would need stitches. I got out the first aid kit, tried to clean it with an antiseptic pad, then wrapped his head in gauze. He looked like a little war victim. Then we went to Urgent Care. While we were waiting for our turn, he was trying to climb all over the little activity tables that they had out (did he NOT learn his lesson?!), and I had to follow him around and constantly pull him back down. When they finally called us back, and took a look at it, a bump had formed that was, I kid you not, sticking an inch off his head, it was bad. They first soaked a cotton ball with a topical anesthetic, and secured it to the wound with more gauze. We had to let it soak in for about a half hour. Then, the doctor came back, and they wrapped him up like a mummy, in a sheet, so that he couldn't flail his arms around while they were working on him. They had to give him some shots to numb the area, and that was the worst part. He cried and kicked his little legs, but was pretty brave, all things considered. While they were working on him, I kept asking him if he was okay, and he would whimper and and say "uh-huh". They had to put in six staples, and when they were done, Ethan sat up and whimpered "Th-thank you." What a brave little guy, polite to the end. After we got home, I cleaned it up a little, but it was to no avail. He kept bonking his head, not hard, but enough to make it bleed a little, and now he has crusted blood in the staples. I called the doctor to ask if I needed to clean it out, and he said that I could do some light cleaning...but "light" cleaning didn't do anything, so I'm just going to leave them alone. Hopefully that's okay. I'm not going to post pictures, because that might be too graphic, but I'm sure he'll have a cool scar when it's all said and done. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of our visits to the doctor for this sort of thing...with three boys, I think it's pretty unavoidable. I have to admit, I thought our first trip would be the result of one of them falling off the bunk bed, though I guess that could still happen, but hopefully not!