There goes mother of the year.

(Like that isn't the most common title for a post by a parent blogger.)

In any case, here's why I won't be winning any awards this year:


Impressively, this bruise is brought to you not by my parental neglect or carelessness. Ada managed her slip, crash!, scream, bruise just by misjudging the distance of a step. Luckily she was just starting to climb the steps when she smashed her head. And the injury? Yeah, it's no broken bone,* but the thud, followed by momentary silence and then ear piercing screams offered me one of those early glimpses into the sure knowledge that even when you are doing everything you know how to do, you can't always protect your child from getting hurt. Good lesson for mom, I guess.

The weird thing is that while Ada will wail ceaselessly if I put her down in order to (gasp!) make her breakfast, within 20 seconds of the head bonk, she had stopped crying and gone back to playing at the park. Plus, after I took that evidence photo, I snapped these pictures of her:





Ada's self-imposed pain has not taught her anything. At least, it has not taught her to lay off the boy-bashing. (If she's this good at it now, oh what a sophomore year in college she'll have!) On Saturday she whacked my friend's son Leo in the head with a plastic shovel. Today she moseyed up to Monkey Boy, who was happily investigating his mother's orange clogs. Neither Ellen or I saw how it happened, but there was a thud, and Monkey Boy was pretty unhappy. Unhappy enough that it almost made Ada cry. Which seems like a good sign. If she is developing even a shred of empathy, there is hope after all.


*I inserted that reference to MU not because I think Kristin is anything less than a stellar mother. I think she's great - one of those people who admits she's not perfect and is cosciously trying to improve her already impressive credentials in areas mom and non-mom. I inserted it because I knew that if I didn't, she'd stop by and comment that since nothing was broken I might still be in the running.