When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I jumped/fell out of the apple tree in front of Mark Whitman’s house.  I can still remember his mother Kathy, running out of the house with a dishtowel.  That may be where I developed my dislike of the sight of blood.  I have fainted at the sight of blood several times in my life, and I’m not sure how I made it through the postpartum time period without passing out. 

We went to the last Concert on the Common tonight, and the kids were all running around like they were just released from a month in solitary confinement.  It was getting pretty dark and all of a sudden Aliya was on her knees in front of me, crying hysterically.  Victoria relayed the sequence of events – a boy pushed Aliya out of the poor lone tree that all the kids hang on – and she was bleeding from her mouth.  Luckily Mrs. Fonseca took charge and brought Aliya to the ice cream truck so she could have some light to see the damage.  The ice cream man gave us paper towels and water, which was really nice.  Then I took Aliya to try to calm her down and Mrs. Fonseca went to the tree to kick some butt.  The boys all denied it but I’m sure they got the message.  When we were leaving, the police officer directing traffic asked if the kid was still there so he could go give him a talking-to, but Aliya just wanted to get out of there.  I thought it was nice that he offered though.

None of her teeth are wiggly but she’s still bleeding a bit, 2 hours later.  I gave her a fresh paper towel to bite on and told her not to take it out for 15 minutes.  When I came back to check, I wanted her to keep the pressure on it but I couldn’t see anything, so I asked her to pull up her upper lip.  Big mistake – a pretty good gush came out and she could see it from the look on my face.  I talked to the pediatrician on call and she assured me that it’s fine, mouths bleed a lot, and they hardly ever do sutures in mouths.  As Mrs. Fonseca says, “That’s why God gave us lips, to protect our teeth.”  Thanks Mrs. Fonseca.

These photos were taken before the tree incident:

I feel a little guilty saying it, but I’m SO GLAD summer’s over.  We had a lot of fun but the last week or so it’s been way too hard to keep the kids entertained and try to get some work done, even with help.  Aliya’s first day is tomorrow, and Adlani has a kindergarten open house.  Thursday is Adlani’s first full day, and Norah has preschool orientation.  She finally starts preschool on Tuesday and we can get back to our routine. 

To get back in the swing of the school year, I spent this evening surrounded by moms of new kindergarteners, doing the worst school-related project EVER.  We had to put Spanish translation stickers into the “Welcome to Kindergarten” books…8 of us worked from 7:30 to 11 p.m. with no dilly-dallying, and we didn’t finish the books.  The stickers were incredibly hard to peel apart, and there were at least a dozen stickers per book times 60 books.  I need to go ice my thumbs in preparation for Round 2.

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The other day Ben and I were talking about the Jaycee Dugard case and Aliya kept asking questions about how the kidnapper had two daughters with Jaycee.  I told her that we’d talk about it later hoping that she’d forget for a few years, but tonight she brought it up again.  I was careful only to answer the specific questions she had and not to give her too much information, but when I told her about the sperm and the egg, her next question was how the sperm got to the egg.

I took a deep breath and then explained where the sperm was ejected from and where the egg was hanging around waiting for the sperm, and that seemed to satisfy her.  She didn’t ask for details of the transfer, and I didn’t have to draw pictures like my friend Lana did.  It was actually good that she was thinking about it in the context of strangers.  Eventually it will strike her that I have first-hand knowledge of the transfer, and I’m guessing there will be additional questions.

For all of you who aren’t ready to share this information with your daughters, I told her several times that this is a conversation that only mothers and daughters should have, and that she is not to talk about it with her friends.  If you find out that she told someone, let me know so I can further reinforce that I have eyes in the back of my head and the walls have ears.
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