Every now and then, time bends, and the events of twenty minutes seem more like twenty-four hours. Last January, I posted about a chaotic twenty-minute dinner involving musical chairs, India, and the Village People. A month prior to that, I posted the twenty-minute vomit-a-thon.
Here is a new twenty-minute installment, which involves the usual chaos and the slightly-less-usual blood loss.
7:56 p.m. I tuck Vivian and William into their beds.
7:58 p.m. Thankful that I have two hours to myself, I turn on the kettle and log on to Twitter. Both kids come downstairs. This conversation happens, which I document on Twitter:
Me to 6yo: “Can you just go upstairs + get back into bed or Mommy’s going to lose it.” DD: “Lose what?” Ahhh!
7:59 p.m. They race each other upstairs.
8:01 p.m. Silence. I take out a tea bag and my favourite mug.
8:02 p.m. I hear hopping, followed by a fall. No screams. Just the voice of my son. “Mom! I’m bleeding!”I bound up the stairs. I feel momentarily impressed I can still take them in a few bounds. The next day I was lucky I could climb them at all.
8:03 p.m. I see blood dripping from William’s toe onto our beige carpet. Before I can accuse him, he says, “I wasn’t even picking my nails, Mom. I cut it on the vent behind the door.”
8:04 p.m. I tell Vivian, who’s overtaken the crime scene, to get a some tissues. She comes back with the box. Then I order her to get a Band-Aid. She runs downstairs. I follow her and grab the camera. Because I’m a responsible mother.
8:05 p.m. I return to William, sop up more blood, and find a shallow slice across his big toe. I get him up to move him to the bathroom, but the toe starts bleeding on the carpet again. “Lie down,” I say. Given that his father has taught him a few dog tricks–like shaking a paw and rolling over–this is an easy command for William to follow. I wrap tissues around his toe again, put my hands around his ankles, and drag him into the bathroom. He thinks this is fun.
8:06 p.m. Vivian returns with a Band-Aid, circa 1948. “It’s the only one I could find,” she says breathlessly. I ask her to get a washcloth. Meanwhile, I let William bleed onto the linoleum.
8:07 p.m. Vivian returns with a hand towel. “That’s not a wash cloth,” I say. She looks at me quizzically. “A washcloth’s smaller.” Off she goes.
8:08 p.m. I clean and dry William’s cut, apply ointment, and put on the old Band-Aid, which has lost its stickiness.
8:10 p.m. I find a newer Band-Aid at the bottom of a gym bag and apply it. I tuck the kids in again and stop to look at the carpet.
8:12 p.m. I tweet this:
So, how do I get blood out of a beige carpet? #freakingkids.
8:13 p.m. Twelve replies, all saying virtually the same thing: “Peroxide. Now!”
8:14 p.m. I get peroxide from the first aid cupboard and notice that Vivian destroyed the childproof lock to get to the Band-Aids.
8:16 p.m. The carpet appears to be clean, or at least blood free. I put the kettle on again and wait.
*
Any chaotic moments in your life these days?
Sounds like a nice relaxing start to the evening. I wonder if the peroxide will work for getting pink lipstick that been mashed into a shag carpet for the last year.
More dance fall-out? 😉
Not lately, but I do remember when theo was about 8 months, he fell down and bit his tongue. Tongues bleed like CRAZY! It looked like he had a HOLE in his tongue. Blood everywhere (but no the carpet – haha). Just as we were pondering whether to call 911, the bleeding stopped and he stopped crying and the whole thing healed in about a day.
Yikes. At least it stopped *before* you called 911. Do you think they’ll give us honourary medical certificates? Well, maybe the mail-order places that give gun-cleaning degrees will.
@ 8:04 the line about being a responsible mother makes me laugh.
8:05 – the image of you dragging your child by the ankles across the hall is fantastic!
8:06 – The bandaid circa 1948 has me laughing again 🙂
8:08 – I wonder how some people are able to be funny no matter what they describe. Is there some sort of humor supergene and am I close to having one?
8:10 – Thing 1 appears next to blood stain and I emit a cackle that would make you proud!
Glad you’re cackling. I don’t think there’s a supergene – unless it’s given out to balance one’s likelihood of being admitted somewhere.
Isn’t it creepy how Twitter knows everything?
Creepy, yes. But it’s also more efficient than Google…
ROFL! Nothing like kids who keep you on your toes while they bleed from theirs.
LOL. Ode to puns!
This is the “laugh at your kids” part of your tagline, right? I love William saying, “I wasn’t even picking my nails, Mom.”
If you did a minutely breakdown of every waking hour, wouldn’t it look about the same as a 20-minute snapshot? I know it would at our house. Minus the blood letting and tea drinking, pretty much every bedtime feels like that around here.
Yes, bedtimes are usually a variation of that. I suspect your house is pretty crazy, too. In fact, I’m sure it’s crazier given your creative recreation…i.e. pulling your kids behind the ATV while they sit in a plastic swimming pool. Admittedly, this sounds like way too much fun.
I love that you dragged him by his ankle! We have very light beige carpets too. My kids know, if they’re bleeding get to hardwood or tile. Stat! 😉
I think we’re going to have to practice this chant at our house: “Don’t bleed on carpets. Don’t bleed on carpets.” Must train them like you did!
Sometimes we can look “well prepared” …
A few years ago I was in line at the grocery store. The man ahead of me had a large made-to-order decorated cake in his hands. You know the type of cake covered in that same tough hard plastic that makes us want to scream when we were are trying to open a new purchase. The check-out belt is full of the groceries of the person currently being checked out. So the man maneuvers the cake onto one hand while he digs out his wallet. He almost completes this feat when the cake starts to fall. He lunges for it – misses – and the cake is now a mess – AND he’s cut his finger on the “user-friendly” plastic lid. We have an audience now, as I first pull out a tissue from my purse and then pull out a band-aid (sorry, no ointment). The cashier later tells me as I check out – “Wow were you a girl scout or something?” (Answer I didn’t give but thought “No, I’m from an accident prone family”).
My mother used to say, when she was alive, that one of the best things about where we grew up in Montreal was that the emergency dept was only 2 blocks away.
Course it doesn’t always go that smoothly. We were on a long hike one time and came across a group that was camped – they asked if we had any band-aids – and every one I pulled out was the used-to-be-sticky variety (I wonder if some band-aid manufacturer employee got an award for inventing that feature?)
Hilarious. Well, maybe not for the guy who got a paper cut from the cake box, but still. And yes…how annoying is it that some Band-Aids don’t stick?
LOL! I’ve been there!!! Recently. Sigh. It was good of Vivian to try to help. My twins will offer help, then get distracted, and I end am left on my own. They lack follow through.
Well, it was amazing that Vivian didn’t push me out of the way to deal with it herself…
Thanks for commenting!
Yeah, my husband was trying to put our 8-month-old on his shoulders and stuck her head in the ceiling fan last night. Thump, thump, thump, SCREAM! No blood, but we have a nice goose egg on the side of her head. He didn’t realize he was that close to the fan. Our living room is about the size of this box, of course he was that close to the fan.
Natalie, that is the funniest thing I’ve heard…once I realized your daughter was okay, of course. Ouch. Somehow, I think you’ll be telling her that story when she’s 14.
I can laugh about it now. It wasn’t so funny then. She doesn’t hold it against him either.
I’m pretty sure Vivian got that band aid from our kitchen cabinet. The dusty one above the oven that no one can reach. All of our first-aid items were packaged pre Cold War. And since my children are 11 and 13, we have no childproof locks.
Plus, nobody wants Bayer Aspirin that’s growing its own penicillin. So our cabinets are pretty much safe from intruders.
Thanks for the blood-on-the-carpet peroxide tip, though.
Too bad hydrogen peroxide has a shelf life. Ours smells a bit like jacuzzi water that hasn’t been filtered in a while.
But my rug can’t look any worse than it already does, so the next time someone in THIS house is bleeding, look out!