The Shiner in the Night

Last night Lena had an accident. She was supposed to be in bed, but for some reason had decided that she was going to play with her xylophone alligator. Evan heard her tinkering away in her room (I was chatting to our next-door neighbors) when suddenly he heard a huge thud followed by Lena's "Help me I'm dying/really really hurt!" cry... the one that is usually reserved for when she launches herself off a slide to find that she can't fly and now has a mouth full of blood. Perplexed as to what on earth she could have done to hurt herself that badly whilst playing with her xylophone, Evan ran into her room to find her curled up on the floor with a huge bleeding gash on her eye, screaming (of course). We still don't know what she hit her face on, and she was obviously in no fit state to tell us what gave her a boo-boo. She was so inconsolable, in fact, that Evan had to come and find me to get her to calm down, although I'm not sure if that was to do with the fact that she needed her mummy or the fact that she didn't like that daddy was putting an ice pack on her face.

Naturally I took pictures. This one was about 30 minutes after the fact.



Lena was pretty delicate for the rest of the night. Her various demands ranged from having mum or dad hold her head their hand to insisting on holding as many comfort-cuddlies (blanket, monkey, another blanket, drink...) as she possibly could. We gave her Tylenol, we cuddled her in her bed, we put Neosporin on her eye (more to protect her cut from the the salt in her tears), we cuddled her more, we helped her try to sleep after she woke up (a few times) because her eye hurt... we basically babied her and gave her everything she wanted, and anything she needed. Poor kid.

This morning, her eye had swelled up and purpled quite nicely - I took more pictures to share with all of you.





So far she has made no indication to us that it hurts more than she can handle, which is a good thing. I think she will be fine; she is just going to have a fat eye for a few days.

... It won't be long now before she is giving shiners to Oliver!