Blood & Bone

Miss3 riding
Miss3 with her helmet at a jaunty angle.

“Are we ready to go home?” I asked Tracey. We’d taken the kids to a park where they can ride their scooters and bikes.

“No, not yet,” she said. “They’re having so much fun.”

“So we’re going to wait until someone hurts themselves then?”

I was only half joking.

Sometimes I think we act like hard core proponents of helicopter parenting, but then we go somewhere fun with the kids and someone ends up damaging themselves while our backs are turned and I think, ‘Naw, we’re good.’

Like Miss9’s recent leg breaking efforts. ‘We’ll duck down to the park’ turned into two months of hospital visits and therapies. Healing Miss9’s broken leg has been a long and drawn out process, with the bone healing fine but then finding she has ligament damage as well. This, combined with the weather, has meant we’ve confined ourselves to home for the last few months.

It’s been great. And by great I of course mean hellish.

Miss9 and yoshi
I think Miss9 was using Yoshi to race her siblings, although it’s equally as plausible she was using Yoshi to try and make them crash.

So when the sun came out this weekend we saw an opportunity to stretch our legs and we grabbed their bikes and scooters and ran from the house (except Miss9, who hobbled).

It was fun.

When we arrived there was one other family who’d just pulled up with their two kids. We felt a little sorry for them. It must have looked like they were going to have the whole track to themselves, but by the time they unloaded their bikes we’d pulled up. We must have looked like a clown car as one after another of us jumped out until there was seven of us noisily dragging scooters and bikes and eskies into the fenced area.

Our kids can’t do quiet. Even when they’re asleep, they talk.

While Miss9 still couldn’t ride a bike or scooter, she took her Yoshi remote control car and had a ball trying to race the kids with it. Even Miss1 joined in, pushing her walker thingy all over the shot.

Miss5, on a good lap
Miss5 on a good lap.

But, of course, it wasn’t long before it happened.

Miss5 and Master7 were having a race when Miss5’s front wheel wobbled and her scooter went right while she continued straight ahead. Face first. Into the bitumen.

I’m not saying there weren’t tears but considering the damage to her nose and lips, and the fact she lost the race to her brother (who naturally took advantage of her fall to notch up a win) I thought she did rather well.

“I made blood!” she spluttered at me as I checked she still had all her teeth.

“Yes, you did, sweetie. And you know what that means?”

“I need to go to hospital?”

“Not this time,” I told her. “It’s just time to go home.” I looked at Tracey. “Unless you want to hold out for a break?”

Apparently, I am not funny.

Like a boss.
Like a boss.

“Is she alright?” the parents of the other two children asked us as we began to load up the car. Their faces looked an odd mix of worry for our hurt daughter and glee at us leaving so they could hear themselves think.

“This is nothing,” I told them, explaining the damage was only skin deep and so a far better outcome than last time when Miss9 broke her leg. To emphasize my point, Miss9 chose this moment to hobble past on her crutches.

Like Master7, I’m taking the win when I see it.

Miss1 keeping up
Miss1 stepping it out.

Our ‘BIG FAMILY little income’ Facebook Page

 ‘raising a family on little more than laughs’

 

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.