Black-Eyed Peach

I’m beginning to wonder whether having me in my Becoming-A-Dad role is such a healthy thing for little Juliette…

In the past 2 weeks she’s suffered a number of bang-ups and minor calamities when I’m around, specifically when I’m either playing with her or trying to get her under control. For instance last weekend we went to the National Botanical Gardens where Juliette wanted to run away and do her own thing. I was chasing her to put her hat back on (strangely enough, it’s been very sunny and warm here in Dublin so we’ve been concerned about her getting sunburnt of all things). I plopped it on her head as she was running away from me. She kept running but was trying to pull the hat off at the same time, took a mis-step and went SMACK on her face on the pavement. Ow! She didn’t get her hands up in time and banged her mouth into the ground which caused her to have abrasions on her upper lip and cuts on the inside of the lip from her teeth.

Needless to say, neither Becoming-A-Dad nor Juliette were terribly pleased, so poor Juliette cried while covering me with little spots of blood to remind me of what a terrible guy I was.

Fast forward to Wednesday night… I got home reasonably early for a change (before 7 pm! wow!). So I was playing with Juliette before her bedtime – she was running around her bedroom and I was pretending to chase her on all fours, making loud footstep noises. Again she stumbled and headed face-first into a little side table, again breaking her fall with her face. Not a lot of tears this time, but the souvenir is a nice shiner on her left eye.

It’s her upper eyelid/eyebrow that got beaned, so I don’t think it hurt as much as it might have had she hit lower on her face. It’s been kind of fascinating to watch – changing colour over the past few days, from deep red to blue to purple and today, purple with green edging. So this is Juliette’s first black eye. And once again I feel somewhat responsible for this latest injury.

*sigh*