Crash Bang Wallop, family all fall down

A couple of nights ago Martin had the most lovely flash of inspiration. He decided that since we’re in a built up area and there were too many fireworks to sleep, we should go for a walk and look at them all. It was so nice, a real family evening.

Morgan has two more clever baby brag/updates. Last night she slept nine hours on only two feeds (whoop!) and also she is “reading” a book we have from the library. She makes chatting noises at some pages and (in line with the story) does the CUTEST little fake baby laugh at others.

Unfortunately all the good is balanced out with some bad. Here is my story about what happens when you fall when babywearing… We were walking through town. When I say “walking” I guess I was the only one actually doing so. Jenna was protesting because she wanted to run off up the escalators and I was preventing her. I am ashamed to say I ended up more or less dragging her kicking and screaming. After a while she started walking properly but asked for a ride on one of those infernal car things. I said we had neither time nor money for one and she threw herself on the floor dramatically. Since we were still walking hand in hand this was a little inconvenient and several things happened at once.

Jenna hit the floor, I tripped, fell, threw the bags away from me and put my arm under to protect Morgan’s head. Jenna got kicked in the head more or less and Morgan hit the floor back first at a rather reduced speed due to one of my palms and the opposite knee absorbing the impact. I sat up.

Jenna was howling. Morgan woke up from being a little squished and protested but not much. I checked her head briefly but was fairly sure she hadn’t hit anything and had only suffered brief pressure around her midriff from my body. However I couldn’t move a great deal and my leg felt quite numb. We were also surrounded by people expecting to find the baby crushed to death or suffering a head injury and giving me a lot of advice about what to do in those cases.

Anyhows we sorted out with all the spectators that the children were fine (and Jenna rather better behaved in total shock at what had just followed her mardy) and that Morgan had not so much as a mark and was in fact trying to go back to sleep (“don’t let her sleep for an hour or so, in case she has concussion”). *sigh*

We were helped to the first aid station (I felt really stupid sitting in a wheelchair) and we discovered that what I had in fact done was not as serious as it could have been. Let’s just say that three ice packs later my knee was still purple and swollen like a turnip and I am now literally black and blue all over.

We promised to go right home on the bus, which we did. The first aid staff were telling me all their horror stories about injuries to children in pushchairs, which made me feel much better, but I really didn’t feel like doing the rest of the jobs we had to do anyway. Plus my knee *really* hurt. I must have been really shaken though – I sat for a good twenty minutes trying to make sense of an advert on the bus.

I was confused by a sign promising, “Action to Die Hard 4.0”, and feeling increasingly frustrated by the obvious missing words. Then of course I removed my mental parenthesis around the film title and realised the pun for/four. I am entertaining the very real possibility that a Stickler like me insisting that the name of the film is a proper noun simply did not occur to the promotions team. I feel alone in a world in which other people do not have to walk around all day puzzling “the tart is WHAT?” when the sign for Strawberry Tart’s appears in a local bakery…

As for Jenna’s take on my awful day, tonight she prayed earnestly, “Lord Jesus please make mummy’s knee get better soon so that she will stop being cross with me!” She told Martin that my leg was “all purpley” because I’d tripped over her when she was “being cross on the floor”. She also told him, “don’t worry thought it will be alright, because I’ve prayed for it now.”