Fat Lips

January 2012

Baby has a strategy to keep Husband and I on our toes.  Whenever Husband watches her while I go off and do something (meet a friend, run an errand, etc.), she chokes.  Literally.  Then she will turn blue, Husband will freak out, turn her upside down and clear all airways.

With me, she gets hurt.   

Baby is now in this phase where she likes to climb everything.  She has no fear, either.  She climbs chairs, couches, the kitchen table (we've discouraged this one, don't worry), anything she can pull herself up on, she does.

One day Baby decided to climb up on the couch.  Then stand on the couch.  Then she fell off the couch, onto one of her toys.  She smacked herself right on the corner of it with her lip.  It swelled up so fast I didn't know what to do.  She cried for a little bit,but then she was fine.  I called a friend of mine for advice.  She said to just check for any loose teeth (none that I could tell) and put ice on it.

I tried to put ice on it, but she didn't want any of it.  I gave her an ice pop to suck on, which she was interested in for a whole half a second.  Then she went back to playing.  Luckily the swelling went down and all was fine. 

Fat lip number two happened outside.  We had found a neat toddler play structure not too long ago for the backyard so Baby would have something to climb out there.  It is about four and a half feet tall, two stories, with a slide going down from the second story.  It's pretty neat, although I had hoped Baby would have figured out by now how to climb it herself (she climbs everything else!).  Nope. She will go down the slide by herself, then run over to the ladder part and wait for help to get back up. One time she tried to get down the structure by going down the ladder instead of the slide.  She misjudged her hold and Bam!  Fat lip.

Fat lip number three happened outside the public library.  We had just gone to story time and she wanted to play on the metal statue out front.  It's a sculpture of an elderly woman reading to a few children.  All of them are seating in a row on a bench.  Baby lost her footing while walking around it and smacked her mouth into the corner of that metal bench.  We had lots of blood that day. 

Fat lip number four was as a result of Baby trying to climb again.  She was climbing one of our kitchen chairs, lost her balance, and smacked her face into the side of the wooden chair. 

Fat lip number five was outside when she was running around.  We have a flower garden outside our front window that she likes to help Mommy tend.  The flower garden is surrounded by concrete pavers.  She fell into the concrete flower garden, face first on the concrete, of course. 

I think I'm getting pretty good at having fat lips at this point in time.  The rule is to always have a popsicle handy.