My two front teeth

So, it looks like Julia is finally going to lose a tooth - her front two teeth actually. This would be cause for celebration since she has watched one by one as her friends have lost one, two, three, four and even five teeth, but lets just say she's going about losing them the hard way.

See where this might be going???

She and Dan were out, he runs and she rides her bike. When they got back, I was in the kitchen making dinner (chicken kabobs in case you wondered), I hear Julia crying (which is a very commonplace occurance) and I said, "Oh boy, now what" (I know, great parenting at work again), I hear Dan say, "Well, this time she has a reason to cry." I turn and look, and Julia is covered in blood. The entire bottom half of her face is bloody and it's all over her hands and it's actually dripping from her chin. Her lip is already swollen. I quickly looked away and told Dan he needed to give a mother warning before she sees this kind of thing.

Apparently Julia was going down a big hill and lost control. She flipped over the handlbars and landed on her face. Dan said it was a terrible thing to see, he was amazed she didn't break anything.

I give her some ibuprofen quickly, and get her upstairs. I help her get her clothes off, and do a quick inventory of bloody spots. She gets in a lukewarm bath and just sits there. This is the same girl that we had to physically restrain because of lightly filing a wart that didn't even hurt. She freaks out a bit every time she sees the blood drip from her face. I explain that faces are often pretty bloody, mouths especially.

So, the rinsing process begins. We change out the bloody water for fresh water and let her soak for a while. At this point I got up to get her a wash cloth. I felt like I had to vomit, then walked in the bedroom, I knew it was coming and passed out on the bed. Nice. I know how to handle bloody injuries huh? I was surprised I had held together so well in front of her.

I called for Dan to come up and he took over for a moment while I composed myself. Then I got the washcloth and we began cleaning up her face. As you can see in the picture, once the blood was gone, the damage was minimal (well, in comparison to what it could have been). Her bottom lip has road rash, her top lip is split, her teeth on top are loose and her gums are bruised. Her nose and directly underneath also have road rash.

After she soaks a bit to relax and let some of the dirt soak, I took her in the bedroom and began patching her up. In our emergency kit, we actually had a Road Rash kit that came in handy. Used some pain relieving antiseptic wash and surgical sponge to clean out the wounds. She was awesome. AWESOME. I know it had to have been really uncomfortable, if not outright painful, and she was great. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt when it happened so the damage to her arms and legs was minimal and those were clean. I can't imagine what it would have looked like if she had shorts and a shirt on, judging my her hands, it would have been a dirty, nasty mess to clean up. Her hands were scraped raw on her palms AND she had road rash on the tops and in between her fingers. I have no idea how that happens. I put some antibiotic ointment on the big spots, covered with some ginormous bandaids, covered her hands with the non-stick gauze and used the awesome stretchy burn gauze to wrap her hands. Bandaid on the chin, and ice cream and popsicles for dinner to help the swelling on her lip.

Two hours later stuff has started to bruise, and I think she's going to really look beat up tomorrow. Depending on how she is feeling I might keep her home at least for the morning, I know the day after can sometimes be worse than the day of. She's been excited about going back to school (she had Spring Break last week), but now isn't thrilled about the idea.

I know in the scheme of things it doesn't seem like a huge crisis, but there is something about seeing your little girl just covered in blood that hits hard. I told her I was so glad she had her helmet on and she started crying and said, "So am I mommy, It could have been so bad if I didn't"

I told her she'll have a great story to tell about what she did on her Spring Break!