Painful Parenting

My friend Becky wrote a post recently about how being a parent has caused her a lot more physical pain than she ever thought possible. (Read Becky's post HERE) And as all parents know, she's absolutely right! She listed several instances where her own children have caused her injury, most of which I have also experienced, and I won't repeat them here, so you should go read her post!

But I will share was is to date the greatest injury the kids have given me, I think. I can't remember a worse one. The story was too long to leave in a comment on Becky's post.

I was in the kitchen, cleaning up the kids after lunch one day. Zachary and Thomas were already clean and out of their chairs. I was rinsing the rag out at the sink when I heard behind me the sound of children playing with cans of food. I rushed to the corner of the kitchen where there are two boxes of canned food stored within reaching distance of toddlers and there are Zachary and Thomas pulling cans out of the box and rolling them all over the place. I start yelling and Thomas runs, Zachary just sits there. I squat down in the floor to pick up the cans, put them back in the box, and deliver a lecture to Zachary and all other children within hearing distance about how we don't touch the cans. Now, at this point, I am squatting in the floor, in a rather small space between the kitchen table and the china cabinet.

Unbeknownst to me, while I'm distracted with my can collecting and lecturing, Thomas has come up behind me and sneakily opened one of the drawers in the china cabinet. A drawer he knows he's not supposed to touch! So when I stand up, swiftly and with a purpose, I SLAM my back into the razor-sharp corner of the china cabinet drawer. I literally screamed out in pain and surprise and immediately dropped back down to the ground, clutching the side of the table for support. I know my scream scared the kids. It was really loud. The next thing I heard was Reagan saying, "Okay, Momma? Okay, Momma?" I told her no, I wasn't okay.

The resulting wound was a very tender scratch about two inches long and a bruise the size of a tennis ball. Currently I'm mostly healed, but I'll bet it leaves a scar!

Oh, the pain that goes along with the blessing of having children!