First Blood

Not the movie, the real thing. This morning, Jacob hurt himself badly enough to bleed, for the first time. I knew it was coming, and it really wasn't much at all, but it'll still send a shot of adrenaline through you to see blood on a pacifier. Wasn't that a Lifetime movie? "Blood on a Pacifier," starring Judith Light and Ralph Macchio. I think it came on right after "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?" (On a side note, why is there so much hate for Tori Spelling? Because she used her father's connections to get a movie career? As if that never happens in Hollywood, or the real world, for that matter.)
(On a side note to the side note, the best blog name ever was inspired by that movie: "Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher?")

Here's what transpired. Jacob has a small (a square about 18 inches per side) blanket made by Mama Dunn, aka my mother. Linus had only a passing attraction to his blanket compared to the love Jacob has for his. When we put him in his go-to-sleep swing--and God bless the people who invented that--he can't nod off without it. He starts reaching for it with twitching hands like the Skipper used to have when he'd get mad at Gilligan. And now that he's ambulatory, or at least crawlatory, he's taken to carrying it with him when he scoots across the floor.

This morning, I was in the kitchen whomping up some breakfast when Jacob decided to leave the den and join me. There's a child/dog gate between the den and the kitchen, with a brace that runs across the threshold. Since he started crawling, Jacob has never had any problem getting over it. Well, that's overstating it. He's had some problems, but they were more of the temporary slowdown variety. Nothing too serious. But today, the combination of blanket and gate brace was too much, and he did what the X-Games types call a face plant on the hardwood.

"Waaaah," went my son. "You ain't hurt," went the daddy who had seen this happen before and assumed he was more torqued off than hurt. Plus, Daddy has worked in a church nursery, and knows that most of the time, there's an inverse ratio between amount of noise emitted and actual damage done. So I headed toward him so I could comfort him a second and then send him scuttling on his way, when I saw it. (Dramatic musical sting goes here.) BLOOD ON THE PACIFIER!

I don't know exactly what happened, but I think he had bitten his tongue hard enough to draw blood. And that's no mean feat, because, although he's 10 months old, my boy still doesn't have any teeth. So he hadn't so much bitten his tongue as he had gummed it a really stout whack. It didn't cause big gouts of blood, just a slight tint to his saliva, but you try telling that to the Daddy part of your brain. I'm a lifelong collector of inadvertent cuts and scrapes, and I've been stuck with several porcupines' worth of needles (including having blood gases drawn; when the male nurse got ready to plunge the needle into the underside of my wrist, he laid a deathgrip on it, then looked me in the eye and said, "Hoss, this is gonna hurt." He was right.) so the sight of my own blood barely causes me to pause long enough to apply a medicinal Kleenex. But the sight of my son's blood, well, that's a hemoglobin of a different color.

Luckily for me, my son is a pretty tough hombre. A few seconds of caterwauling and big tears later, he had already noticed the dogwood blooms on the counter, and everything was fine. I know that was just the first of many, many blood-letting encounters, and The Lovely Missus and I aren't overprotective parents, but still, I'd just as soon not repeat that episode any time soon.

Now, here's a real musical non-sequitur: Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend." Hit me with that cowbell, you Canadian rockers you. See you Monday.