Disaster Strikes in Threes

It has been a rough few months for Asher.  Really rough.  

He is doing some major toddler to kid transitioning and it has not necessarily been a smooth transition.  It's been fun on our end.  He has a renewed love for his brother and "sissy" and they are loving how fun and grown up he seems all of a sudden.  He talks to us all day long and we catch some of it.  He has a few phrases that totally crack us up, including but not limited to, "I did it!" "Give me that!" and "what's that?"

His new obsession is undies.  He loves to wear his big boy undies at every opportunity.  He thinks the idea of the potty is very fascinating and even appealing at moments, but he mostly likes cheering on the rest of us when we successfully keep our pants dry.  "Yay mom!  Bye bye pee pees!"  It is very strange to have a potty cheerleader but that is for sure what we have.  Hopefully this half effort on my part will just magically turned into a potty trained child....

His other love is shows.  He is going through a big TV phase.  The timing couldn't be more perfect for me, the extra time between nap time and picking up kids from school is still work time for me and he is  happy to let Leap Frog, Backyardigans, or Curious George fill those precious minutes.

The best part is he is one of those awesome kids who responds to the characters on TV.  It is the best.  When Mickey asks if Asher wants to come in his clubhouse, Asher responds with a very enthusiastic, "Yes!"  And when Diego can't find the baby elephant, Asher points and shouts with the best of them.  

He also now sleeps through the night!  Finally... the formula to a full night's sleep for this kid is threefold: 1) turn on white noise machine while sleeping 2) leak proof sippy filled with water in crib and  3) have your 18 month old suddenly decide he likes pacifiers.  Wouldn't bat his eye at the thing for the first year and a half of his life and now he can't live without one right at the age when most moms are weaning their kids off the plug.  Not this mom.  I figure I'll just put a dollar in the bank for every full night's sleep I'm getting to remember how much his future orthodontia bill will totally be worth it.

So, back to the bad month.  Warning, bloody pictures ahead, not for the faint of heart.

Seriously, they are pretty gnarly.  

Well, in his transition from baby to boy he is convinced he can do anything Scarlet and Rhode do.  They run outside, he runs too.  They go down the biggest slide at the playground, he's right behind them.  They turn my living room into their personal bounce house, he's flying past them.

His first major injury came from our backyard punching bag.  My kids aren't really strong enough to punch it, so they just push it around.  They all gave it a big push, and Asher missed the memo to move out of the way when it comes swinging back.

The black eye extended all the way across the bridge of his nose.  He got a lot of comments wherever we went.  But other than the initial double bloody nose, it didn't seem to bother him too much.  He just looked black and blue for weeks.  It seemed to take a long time to heal, especially when he added his second and most major injury.

We were home on a Sunday evening, everyone relaxing on the downstairs couches when we directed the kids upstairs to get their pajamas on.  Asher enthusiastically joined up in the trek upstairs, but instead of heading to the bathroom for teeth brushing, headed into Scarlet and Rhode's pitch black bedroom.

The lack of light did not seem to deter him from deciding it the perfect time to jump from twin bed to twin bed.  Downstairs, we heard bounce, bounce, bounce, CRASH! followed by SCREAM!  

He had taken a big tumble off their bed onto the wood tiled floor and bit his way cleanly through his bottom lip.

I warned you... bloody.

I am not sure how we were smiling here.  I'm gonna blame this one on shock but I was a total wreck.

We threw our pajama clad kids in the car and headed to the nearest quick care.  They agreed the outside cut needed stitches but they were not equipped to stitch a wiggly one year old so they shipped us off to UMC Childrens Emergency Room.  There they strapped him down in a towel/papoose combo and put four stitches through his front cut.  He retaliated from his tied down position by blowing raspberries with his mouth the whole time and splattering blood over everyone present.

At one point, the doctor noticed his yellowed eye bruise, wondering if it was related to the fall.  I had to admit that no, that was a completely unrelated serious injury.  Good mom moment for sure.

We all survived the night, headed straight to bed and got some sleep.

Literally the NEXT DAY, Asher was sitting on my lap at the kitchen table and decided to jump from my lap to dads without any kind of warning.  Instead of making it, he smacked his head on the side of our table and split the side of his eye.

 It was just gaping enough that we really thought we were going to have to go get stitches for that one too to keep it from making a big scar.  I was humiliated thinking I was going to have to bring my child in for a second set of stitches in two days... surely there was going to be a call to CPS.  Luckily, a well placed butterfly bandage held it in place.

So this is what my beautiful little guy looked like for the next few weeks.

And thankfully, his mood improved before the bruises.

Being third child sure looks rough.  Hope he survives it....