Parenting: Not For the Faint of Heart

The Good

"Mommy, you make the most good chocolate cake!"

"You're so awesome!!" 

"I love you so, so much!"

Awwww.  Straight from S's lips to my heart.  She's full of compliments recently.  It's nice to be appreciated.

The Bad

"You!  In that bed!  You!  Don't move from that bed!  If either of you so much as moves from your bed or touches the other, YOU WILL LOSE THE GAMES FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF SCHOOL, do you understand?????" 

Me, screaming at the boys at 11:30 pm Saturday night, after a minor fracas that left K screaming at the top of his lungs.  I was exhausted and loopy and not all that rational.  I don't know that it was rational to threaten them with the loss of video games for two months but it did keep them in bed.  Not quiet though because K continued to scream for another 45 minutes.

The Ugly

"Heidi, that gash on K's forehead was not just a little scrape!  Come look at this!  See that swelling and bruising and the black eye?"

Terence, taking a closer look at K after yet another screaming meltdown today.  I'd actually just researched broken noses last night for the current story, so I immediately recognized what Terence was pointing out.  During the boys' fight Saturday night, K had most likely broken his nose.  I'd noticed the black eye, but not the swelling and bruising over the bridge of his nose.  So that's why he screamed for so long.  Ooops.  (In my defense he screams like that even when his player dies during a video game-- and it goes on just as long.  K definitely became the boy who cried wolf.  I couldn't tell when he was really seriously hurt.)

Yeah.  Well, on the plus side I did just research this, and I'm pretty sure that everything looks lined up well enough that it should be able to heal on its own.  Now we just have to keep K from jarring his nose for the next month.  No problem, right???