Rocks and Blood

I had an incident with G today that will most definitely not win me the mother of the year award. First off, I let her play with a rock. This one was a pretty big one; probably about 3 inches around but only about 1/2 and inch wide. I saw her pick it up but didn't think too much about it because she mostly likes to push them down the slide. Which she happily did with this one for quite a while. Then I happened to look up (okay, strike #2: I was reading news on my phone) and, in slow motion, saw her throw the rock up in the air and then look up at it. How fast can you go from sitting to dead run? About a millisecond flat if there's a rock involved. But not fast enough to prevent it from hitting her head. By the time I got to her all I could see was blood. Dripping everywhere. All over the place. And, strike # 3 against me: the first thing I thought was how, if I picked her up, I was going to get blood all over my favorite white shirt and light blue skirt. But, pick her up I did. I had blood all over me: shirt, skirt, even my shoes and toes. I whisked her to the bathroom nearby and started in with towel paper. I finally wiped away enough to see that it was a fairly small cut. Then we ran (okay, walked quickly) home in the stroller and called my BIL to come check her out (SIL is the pediatrician but she's out of town). By the time he arrived, I had all the blood cleaned up and could see that the cut was less than a quarter of an inch long. But man did it bleed!

My initial reaction was all business: how to get the blood cleaned up and get her home. But then as I had time to ponder, it scared me more and more. If that rock had hit her just a few inches lower, I have no doubt it would have taken out her eye. That's scarry stuff. I always feel like I am walking a fine line between trying to let her be independent and being an overprotective Mom. Playing with the rock didn't really concern me too much when she first picked it up. I could have prevented the whole incident by taking it away from her. But if I did that with every little thing, I'd turn into the world's most overprotective mom.

Anyway, the whole incident was a bit of stress that I definitely don't need right now. But we muddled through it. Sure glad that's over.