First Blood

Last week we were in Ellie's room. She was happily cruising along her toy box, "pat-pat-patting" it and so forth. She must've somehow slipped because, before I knew it, she was screaming like she'd been horribly hurt. I picked her up and looked her over, but couldn't find an injury. I was about to chalk all the screaming up to her being tired when the next scream shot a bunch of blood onto her cheek and chin. Then I realized that she'd banged her chin on the toy box, ramming her two lower teeth into her toothless upper gum. The wound didn't bleed long and she didn't scream long, considering, but I was somehow reassured to see my daughter bleed. Despite her daring and my fairly rough play, to that point I'd not seen her bleed. It was oddly comforting to discover that she truly was a real little girl that bled red, despite her robotic tenacity. It was surreal to see fresh blood on my child's face and to have neither Elizabeth or me become significantly excited or worried about it. Before we'd had a child, that's how we'd planned to react to such situations; then we did. The incident was also comforting because her first blood-flowing-from-the-mouth injury was really so minor. No more than two minutes afterward, she and I were "walking it off" out of her room, into the living room and she was happily babbling.