First off, congratulations to Jennifer McClure for winning the Bolder Band giveaway!

Secondly, I hope everyone had a nice long weekend in honor of all of those who served in our armed forces. We had a fun weekend celebrating our friends’ wedding with my husband as the officiant.

Anyhow, I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week now, but just wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it, as it is not something I’m proud about. Two weeks ago at dinner, Keenan was taking a very long time to eat. He was not listening and trying to be funny rather than eating. After dinner, my husband was loading dishes into the dishwasher and as Keenan got up from the table, he thought it was funny to walk backwards (even though we told him not to). Well, as he walked backwards, he ran into the dishwasher which made him lose his balance. To break his fall, he put his left hand out which landed directly onto a steak knife that was sticking straight up in the silverware tray in the dishwasher. He severely punctured his hand (down to the tissue) and our kitchen floor was doused in blood. Keenan was screaming, I was going in panic mode and Mirella was crying due to all of the commotion. Luckily, my husband is good in these situations, due to all of his experience in Alaska, and immediately picked Keenan up and applied steady pressure to stop the bleeding. Since it was 7:00 p.m. and we knew there would be a long wait in urgent care, we called my mom to take my husband and Keenan, so I could stay home with Mirella. My husband sat in the back of of my mom’s car with Keenan to make sure he continued to apply steady pressure to the wound. Luckily, Keenan calmed down a bit, but he was still very scared and tearful about the whole situation (as to be expected). To make matters worse, he insisted that I go with him to urgent care, so it broke my heart to not be there with him. I was a worried mess until they got home.

Fortunately, Keenan was able to be seen within 30 minutes of arriving at the urgent care. The doctor cleaned the wound and four painful stitches later with a big bandage, Keenan was good to go. On the drive home, Keenan was surprisingly okay and told my mom and husband that “it was so funny that they took his blood pressure and temperature!” He definitely takes after my husband in trying to find humor in every situation, no matter good or bad!

The next day, Keenan was fine (though not using his hand much, since it was so sore), back to his old self and telling us repeatedly that he was not walking backwards towards the dishwasher EVER again! But, we all learned a lesson that day. We are certainly pointing all knives down in the dishwasher from now on. We only keep the dishwasher door open when we are actively loading dishes. Keenan learned that it’s not okay to fool around and play in the kitchen, and most importantly, that he needs to listen, as the whole incident could have been prevented if he had listened to us telling him to stop walking backwards.

So, am I proud of our little accident? Absolutely not. I feel more embarrassed that we let it happen. If the knives were pointing down in the dishwasher, he would have just bumped his arm or hand instead, of puncturing it. Was it scary? Definitely. I was scared that Keenan would go into shock, since he doesn’t do well with blood. As a parent, I hate to see my child experience pain and I wished Keenan didn’t have to go through all of that. I feel that we let Keenan down by not fully protecting him, but I also feel that he learned a valuable lesson in listening. I know accidents happen, and that they happen to anyone, but it was still hard to digest that it wasn’t our fault. Unfortunately, I know this is probably not going to be the last incident, but I’m hoping we don’t have to repeat that night for a LONG time.

On a more positive note, here is a family picture that we took at our friends’ wedding on Sunday!

Family

Have a good one!

Questions:

Have you ever failed as a parent or experienced “bad parenting moments?”

Have your kids ever suffered any injuries? If so, how did you handle them?

What was your worst injury as a child?