The Killer Bee and Bella

Today's lesson - head wounds truly do bleed profusely. It started to rain today for a little while and the kids love running around in the rain. So I put on their rain coats and boots and sent them out while I folded laundry inside by the back door so I could watch them. Benjamin's raincoat has a bumblebee pattern on it, as do his boots, so he loves to pretend he's a bee when he's wearing them. He grabbed a stick and preceded to chase Bella around the yard trying to "sting" her. At one point they ended up on the concrete patio and Benjamin decided something that I still haven't fully deciphered. For some reason he needed to get his stinger under her boot. Whether he was trying to sting her foot or he wanted her to fight the bee and stomp on his stinger, I'm not sure. The end result was that he grabbed her leg, yanked it up, stuck the stick under her boot and promptly knocked her off balance and straight backwards onto her head.

Bella has two cries. One is the cry of injustice - Benjamin has stolen my toy, I don't want to wear the outfit you've chosen, etc - and the other is the cry of true pain. She let out an ear piercing version of the latter. I immediately dashed out and carried her inside and away from the killer bee. I sat her down and took off her wet rain coat and gave her a hug. She immediately calmed down and stopped crying and I assumed all was well, until I pulled back from the hug and saw that my hands were covered in blood! I looked and saw that so was the inside of her coat. I turned her around and it was running down her hair! She is such a trooper! She was no longer crying and seemed comforted and yet she's gushing blood from her head! I called Benjamin inside to see what his action had caused and then I took her to the sink to try to wash some of the blood away and find the source. She was so sweet. She didn't even cry at all until I found the source and some water hit it. And then it was just, "Hurts mommy! Hurts!" I got some hair clips and pulled her hair away from the wound and then dabbed it with a dry, clean cloth. It was no larger than a pen tip! I couldn't believe it. It was merely the tiniest little cut and yet it took 5 minutes to clot! Crazy girl - after her hair was clipped away and the wound had stopped bleeding, she immediately wanted to go back outside! Benjamin was too distressed over what he'd done to Bella that he was in no mood to return, so I put his coat on her and sent her back out. The fun was gone, though, without Benjamin, and she quickly came inside again too.

I'm just so amazed how resilient Bella has become. Having Benjamin as a brother has really toughened her up. What an amazing little girl. And to Benjamin's credit - he felt so bad that she was hurt, he spent several minutes sitting by her as I cleaned her hair, just hugging her legs and resting his head on her lap telling her how sorry he was.