A Dull Moment, Please.

Accident: (n.) a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action

which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and

deliberate cause but with marked, generally negative, effects.

We're two down on accidents here in the Jones household, and if karma comes in threes, I suppose I should lock my kids inside a padded room. Okay, separate padded rooms.

Accident #1: Hokey Pokey Head Trauma

Last week, at a small birthday gathering for a dear friend, my husband was at the piano playing a round of "Hokey Pokey" with an enthusiastic (this was after birthday cookies) group of our collective kids. Eden, my 3-year-old, turned herself around with a little too much gusto and slammed head-first into the piano bench, with markedly negative effects.

She cried (loudly), it bled (a lot), I had a little shock seizure (?!), and then it was over. We avoided the emergency room only because there was already a doctor in the house. Once the trauma subsided, Eden was just the same as before: laughing and singing. Except now she had this

But before the trauma had subsided, there was definitely a few moments where I thought that she (and we) would never be the same. Hence the seizure, I suppose.
But while I was beside myself, her resilience just amazed me. Five minutes (or maybe ten) of painfully intense crying and it was all over. Like, what's next? Why are you all standing there staring at me? Let's move on.

So we did. And then, a mere two days later...

Accident #2: Surrounded by Bees

My two girls were out playing in the woods, where they often play and where we'd just had a birthday party a week before, when Eden was stung by a bee.

It was a yellow jacket, actually, but a sting is a sting.

Daddy ran to her rescue and by the time he got back to the house with her, I heard Mazzy out there screaming. I mean screaming. I ran out there as fast as I could, which was nowhere near fast enough, and by the time I got to her there were still about six bees going after her.

So she's screaming, I'm crying, batting bees and ripping her clothes off, we're running back to the house, (a distance of about fifty yards) and all I could think was, "This is why people exercise."

Let me say here that I have lots of friends who run for fun, and I never have understood what's fun about it. But after running across a field carrying my six-year-old, I was beyond out of breath and it occurred to me in a new way why running (when it's not an emergency) could be useful.

Back to the point.

Safe back at the house, Mazzy explained what happened, which was this: Eden started crying, saying she'd been bit by a bug and Mazzy was trying to figure out what was wrong when she saw a bee. Then she saw more bees and finally she discovered their hive in the ground. Feeling fierce and protective, she grabbed a stick and started whacking away at the hive. She got stung ten times and was scared half to death when I met her in the field.

Again, her resilience was amazing. I've been stung plenty of times, and it hurts. But I've never been stung multiple times at once. Mazzy got stung TEN times, and she was over it in about five (or maybe ten) minutes.

I think we've all learned something here. But is Eden going to stop dancing? Or are my girls going to stop playing in the woods? We'll just have to cross our fingers and hope for our luck to change.

And, armed with Mazzy's map, we're going to get even with those bees.