Bloody Hell

As I write this, I'm having to consciously remind myself to breath in and out to lower my heart rate.

There are a lot of things that being a heart parent has taught us. Probably the biggest, is how to handle a crisis calmly. Even more specifically is how to handle a crisis while not panicking our other two kids.

Tehilla. Oh, sweet naughty Tehilla. Ya see, she was supposed to be sleeping. She had a nice bath, brushed her teeth, hugged and kissed only the family members that she likes today and went into bed. We sang Shema and blew a kiss good night, then closed her door.

All was quiet for a bit, but then she called for me. I came in. She was upset that I put a fresh green sheet on her bed. It must be changed. No- It MUST be changed. Pink or purple. Those are the only acceptable sheet colors from now on. I realized that there was no hope of her sleeping unless her demands were met. Alas, in this battle I will accept defeat.

The balance of calm is back- until she MUST tell Ron "good morning" even though it is night. Fine. That's an easy one.

So when she cried again, I was not going back in. She had to go to sleep already.

...But her crying was carrying on and getting more spirited. So, I finally went in to see what was wrong this time.

Only to find her entire face, arms, and hands covered in blood. So, in my best "I'm calm, I'm calm but run like hell" voice, I called for Ron. 12 years of marriage and Ron can expertly decipher the exact shrill pitch of my voice to determine the situation. He runs up the stairs and calmly whispers, "oh my G-d!"

We grab Tehilla and start examining her, trying to figure out the source of the blood. Tehilla is laughing and finding the entire thing amusing. We can not find the source of the bleeding.

We grab wipes and start cleaning her off. She swats at us and gets annoyed. We ask her, "Tehilla, where are you hurt? Where is the booboo? " She points to some random spot on her body which of course is perfectly clean of all blood and seems fine.

After a few minutes of cleaning her off, we find a small scratch on her hand that looks fresh. We look at each other with knowing looks, now understanding that she gave herself a small scratch. But because she takes aspirin to thin her blood and prevent clots, it causes excessive bleeding. And because Tehilla is in this lovely toddler stage of smearing everything she can get her hands on (I won't mention some of the nastiest of things), she smeared it all over herself.

And that, dear blog family, is how Tehilla ended up looking like a novice vampire and scared the hell out of us.

Breath in. Breath out.