When Emry and Ethan were quite small and we just moved to this house, it was easy to keep them in the backyard. (Well, once we zip tied the latch on the gate which Ethan opened the first time he went outside!) But Ellyson…not so much. If Emry and Ethan are out with the neighbors, or riding bikes, or racing down the sidewalk with scooters, or coloring with chalk – of course she has to be in the middle of it all!
Thankfully we don’t live on a frightfully busy street. We also live two doors down from the speed bump so most of the vehicles come down slowly. I can keep a good watch on Emry and Ethan from the front window, listening to their “outside voices”, and stepping outside to check on them ever-so-often. On pleasant days I’ll also just take my laptop outside or do other projects on the porch. But when Ellyson goes out, I go out, too. She’s not as cautious as either of them and they don’t keep a close eye on her. But there are moments I will step inside real quick to grab a water bottle or something. And a moment is all it takes.
Our driveway slants down a slight hill to the street. Like her siblings before her, she enjoys sitting on the toy tractor and zooming down it. While I stand at the bottom to catch her, getting a very good shoulder and arm workout in the process. Up until now, she’s been quite good at not going down without me. She’s also been quite good when I tell her not to take the tractor to the hill. But today she out and I stepped inside to tell Ed something real quick. Then she screamed.
I knew immediately what had happened. Before I could get to her our neighbor was there picking her up. She had gone down the hill on the tractor with no one there to stop her. The bump at the end of the drive sent her over the front of the tractor and into the gravel on the street. Her head was bruised, her nose and face scratch up, and she was generally a mess. I took her inside, comforting her, to the bathroom to gently clean her up and keep an eye on her lest she had hit her head harder than I could see. She had no signs of a concussion, just a really good wipe out: bruised knot on the head, scratches in various places, busted lip. And very shaken.
To keep an eye on her, I let her curl up on our bed with her blanket, helped her eat a popsicle (which she wasn’t vastly interested in) and let her watch her favorite: Cocomelon.I confess I let her do this for probably over an hour while I did some chores nearby and tried to get her to eat something. With the busted lip, she wasn’t interested in food for a while but within an hour and a half she was more herself, ready to go do something else. Later she ate just fine and was back to normal before the day ended, albeit still looking like she got the worse of the boxing match.
The bruises and scratches will heal. She won’t even know they’re there. The biggest question, however, is did she learn her lesson? With Ellyson, I’m not quite sure.
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