How Many Bounces Was That?

Well it finally happened. I mean I knew it would eventually. I'm kind of surprised it hadn't happened already. Abby fell down the stairs yesterday.

We live in a rather old house as you may know. The stairs are pretty steep. I don't find them all that bad, but then I have the advantage of having made 3 billion trips up and down in the last 23 years. Abby's still a relative newbie, but she always seemed to handle them very well. I always made sure that she treated them with respect. No running or playing, hold the hand rail, when we had one that is. We took it down when we repainted the hall. We just bought a new one a couple of weeks ago, but it's laying in Abby's toy room waiting to be installed. Not that I think the rail would have helped her yesterday. Well I can't even say that because nobody saw her fall. Mike was in the kitchen with a fussy Maya and I was having a shower. Abby was in her room with her bucket of naked Barbies.

As I was shampooing my hair I could hear Mike and Abby in the kitchen. Abby was obviously upset, but I didn't really pay attention. Abby and her father have a communication problem which usually results in Abby being upset. She's a headstrong thing and likes to think she "owns" her father. I was in no way expecting Mike to whip the door open and yell at me to get out of the shower she's fallen down the stairs. Abby appeared next at the door, red faced and crying. She had just finished puking all over herself and the kitchen floor, but there was no blood, no visible bruises and nothing appeared to be broken. So I finished my shower, quickly and ran a bath for her.

While the bath was running I stripped her clothes off and checked her body for any bruises or bumps. Mike and I both ran our hands over her head, but detected no lumps. I found a small red mark high on the middle of her back and she had a red scratch down the side of her nose. Probably from her own little jagged fingernails. She's a nail biter, something Mike noticed only this week. Another one of his legacies. We tried, in vain, to get her to tell us what had happened. "I fell on the stairs" is as much detail as we got. From the sound of it, Mike guessed she fell down about 5 or 6 stairs. She's a lucky girl, it could have been much worse.

Yesterday morning Abby and I were getting the laundry together. I had my hair pulled back in to a messy ponytail/bun sort of things. Abby looked me over, "Mom, you look a little bit like a clown." Nothing like having a kid to keep your grounded.

Time to go, today is apple pie day. That's our baking project this week. Abby has been waiting patiently for two days to make it. And now she's stripped off all her clothes and has just run through the office saying a monster is chasing her. She has a thing about being naked this week. Must be those naked Barbies.