Real Parents

After Brendan was away from Day Care for a week, plus two weekends of course, I knew Marion was a little worried at how Brendan would react coming back, getting back into her routine and adjusting back to his “normal” life. When I picked Brendan up on Monday afternoon, I was surprised at her reaction. Not the typical “It was a rough day Mum” (remember the English accent), or “He’s cranky today Mum.”

Instead, we had this conversation:

Marion:“I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing something right”
Rachel: “What’s that??”
M: “You are doing something right, he came back to me like he never left.”
R: “Oh?”
M: “I had no problems today, he just fell right back into his routine.”
R: “Well, we try to keep him on a pretty consistent routine at home too, nap times are around the same time, and bed time is always at 8:00.”
M: “A lot of parent’s are go, go, go, with no routine. You guys are real parents.”
R: “Thank you? I guess?”

It was a compliment I guess. A rather strange one to be called “Real Parents” but I appreciate her attempt. I was glad to hear Brendan didn’t give her a hard time back at Day Care. And it was nice to have confirmation that as parents we are doing something right. When everything else seems to be going wrong, he has bumps and bruises all over, he won’t eat well, I get temper-tantrums in the grocery store – but at least we’re doing something right.

Brendan's First Boo-Boo

Brendan came home from Day Care with his first real "boo-boo". When I picked Brendan up on Friday afternoon, he had a small red mark on his cheek. Marion told us "We had our first boo-boo today mum." (Said in her cute little English accent.) Apparently, Brendan was going in and out of the door (his favorite past time) and threw a fit when Marion told him to stop, fell and hit his cheek/face/eye on the door frame. She said he barley cried and wouldn't let her put ice on it, so she thought it was fine.

This all happened about 10 minutes before I picked Brendan up. When I got to her house, Brendan was playing outside, and didn't want to leave the toys to go home. His cheek looked a little red, but from what I could see he was fine. After we got home, I began to really notice the dark spot above his eye. Brendan got his first black eye!Our kid is pretty tough, the black eye didn't seem to faze him at all, we could tell it was swollen and could see a bump on his eyebrow, but it didn't hurt him at all, even when we would touch it or put shirts over his head.

On the next Monday, Scott dropped Brendan off at Marion's house. I got a phone call at work an hour later from her. "Rachel, did his black eye happen at my house?" (Again with the English accent.) I told her that it did, she felt so bad! She explained that since he didn't cry, she didn't think it was that bad! Scott and I know that our kid is a little dare-devil and will do anything to go outside and play, so we weren't really worried about. We know that Brendan is safe at Marion's house. She has now fixed the door until Brendan gets older where it can no longer be opened and closed. A black eye is not going to stop our little dare-devil!

Unfortunately (fortunately?) you can't really see how bad the black eye looked in the pictures. I guess I could have kept trying, but it may be better that we weren't able to capture on film how bad our baby's eye looked! The bump happened on Friday, October 9th, so at this point, the black eye is really mostly a slight greenish-yellow color, and fading fast. But Brendan can now say he got a black eye...from a fight...with a door...