LP's newest

Last week just as we were about to take out the security gate at home, an overexcited LP missed a stair and fell down. I was there in time to prevent him from landing on the stone floor, but couldn't prevent him from injuring himself. As I was holding him and consoling his shriller-than-usual cry, I started feeling some warm liquid dripping on me. Not good. We quickly realized that he was bleeding, quite a bit, from the head. M only had time to turn off the oven and we immediately rushed to the ER. The wound eventually coagulated and I won't say he lost liters and liters of the stuff, but it was scary. My clothes, arms and face were covered with blood stains, and the washcloth I held over his head was full. But he remained alert, energetic, and incessantly talking, so at least we weren't that worried about head trauma. In the end, after they checked him up, cleaned and disinfected his head, it turned out to only be a really small cut. They told us there are a lot of veins and capillaries on the head to feed the brain, which explains the really gore moment we had.



[Just so you know, he doesn't have his pacifier all the time, just for sleeping usually. But it was still in the diaper bag from our vacation, because I let him suck on it in the plane so his ears wouldn't hurt and he would feel calmer... We figured that would be a good time to let him indulge.]

He is totally fine, and unless he becomes completely bald one day (which would be surprising giving both family histories), an eventual scar will never show. He keeps proudly telling everyone about his incident and his trip to the hospital (the French word for falling down the stairs is "débouler" (l'escalier), but it's hard for him to pronounce so he sometimes says "W" instead. It's pronounced "dou-ble-vé", so it's kind of alike-sounding, plus he remembers that it was the name of our hotel in Miami).

In Florida, when we asked him about what he felt like eating, he decisively replied: "Cuban food." It must have been coming from somewhere but we have no idea.

In a Vietnamese restaurant full of fish tanks, he said his most complex sentence to date, which totally floored me. All the words were there, the structure was perfect, and he used a verb tense (past subjunctive) most adults don't master quite well: "Regarde maman, le petit garçon avec la chemise est allé voir le poisson que j'avais regardé." (Look mommy, the little boy with the shirt went to see the fish I looked at.)

Looking at the gas pump while his dad was fueling up and we were listening to music in the car: "Regarde, maman! Les chiffres, ils dansent! Ils aiment la musique!" (Look mommy, the numbers are dancing! They like the music!)

After watching LA Ink with his dad, he said: "Quand je vais être grand, je vais avoir un tatou, OK?" (When I'm big, I'll have a tatoo, OK?) How sweet that you're asking me for permission now dear. The answer is no.

He has a small replica of the space shuttle, which his dad brought back from a business trip to Orlando last year. This summer with the 40th anniversary of landing on the moon and all the media coverage on space missions he started being really into it, and so this toy is never far. In French, the space shuttle is called "navette spatiale." But LP has always been calling it the "navette spéciale" (the special shuttle). It always makes us smile so we've never corrected him.

In other news, he's now wearing big boy underwear during the day. Buying these has been such a blast, it's probably one of the few clothing areas where boy options outweigh the girls'. I find it so cute so see him in his Marvel comics, Cars or Thomas underwear! He still has accidents (and man, it's GROSS), but is making amazing progress. We finally can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And people, getting out of the diapers phase is probably the. most. significant. improvement. to our quality of life ever since he was born.