Intrepid Murmurings

Poor Delia! 

Yesterday, after a nice aftrernoon riding bikes and playing with balls in the driveway, I put the babies over the gate we have across the front porch (so they can play on the porch and go in and out) and started putting away toys and tools and stuff.  I put the two baby bikes over with them, as they often ride them inside.  Probably a minute and a half later I was putting the wagon away around the side of the house when I heard a wail.  Coming from the backyard.  Not good.

Delia had sped through the house on her bike, past Lonnie cooking and right out the open back doors and down three steps landing face first on concrete.  When I got to her she was sitting up, gushing blood, her bike upturned next to her.  One of those horrible parenting moments. 

We washed her off briefly in the sink, Lonnie checked to make sure her teeth were all there and okay, and then I took her and a wad of paper towels to the rocking chair where we dabbed and nursed and drank water from a sippy until she finally was calm. Her mouth was torn up a bit inside around the top teeth, and she has scrapes on the top and bottom of her lips and cuts on her lip, which was and still is pretty swollen. Poor baby!

Miraculously, in an hour or so she was ready for dinner and ate fine, and was in fine spirits for her bath and afterwards. At bedtime I was talking to her about the accident and she signed "hurt" and "bike" and seemed very intent on listening to the story. She got ibuprofen through the night and was definitely more needy than usual (slept with me), but all in all she bounced back really well. Still has a fat lip today but she was back on the bike and up to her usual antics as usual. Whew!

So, lesson learned! I have actually envisioned this happening and have been trying to be really vigilant about keeping our back screen door closed, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. Now we put the spring back on so that it closes automatically again (sorry Aiko dog) and that should prevent this from happening again. Its almost worth not having bikes in the house for, but they just LOVE them so much and get so much entertainment and exercise out of them I really don't want to do that. But no more daredevil bike stunts Delia, please!