Rocky Balboa boy

I have come to the conclusion that there isn't any way to prepare myself for what I feel when my kids get hurt. For, as much as I would like to change it, I am sometimes that over reacting mother when I see my child get hurt. You know the kind of mother that I am talking about...one that gasps so loudly that one might fear no air could be left in the room. It always seems like an overreaction no matter how dire the emergency might be. As I started writing this, it brought to mind a memory that I had tucked away some years ago. It was a Sunday afternoon just as church was letting out, and someone came running to the church building saying Eddie was just hit by a car. We lived across the street from the church, so my dad (Eddie, the grandaddy formerly known as Hey) would have been walking if he was hit. I remember seeing my grandmother faint...just before they said that it was Mr. Eddie Branan, not my dad. Mr. Eddie was injured, but he was hit while driving his car rather than as a pedestrian. I suppose I can at least be grateful that so far, I've proven not to be a fainter. It's strange how feelings, even old ones about memories, can change so much once you become a mother yourself. But I suppose it would also have been impossible to prepare me for the comfort that I feel, and the peaceful happiness that envelops me when I look at my sleeping children...safe and content and sound asleep in their bed each night.

And we started out so peacefully this night. Ro was asleep, and Jax and I were just settling into his bed for his nighttime story and prayer. I was telling Jax that my head really hurt, and that we would keep our stories short. He immediately jumped up and said "Medicine. Daddy. Medicine. Mommy's head." He was wanting to get Daddy to bring me some medicine. Of course, I knew that he would return empty handed (we don't let our 2 yr old handle medicine!), but I let my very determined 2 year old go on his mission anyway. Just as he started running down the hall, I saw it happen in my head. The table. The dining room table. We moved it to clean some tee-tee off the oriental rug. (For some reason, the potty must not have been good enough on this occasion.) It was in the walkway going into the kitchen. The lights were dim, so it would be easy to run into it. Before I could get the words out I heard his scream. I got tangled in the cover and fell off his bed trying to get to him. And it was awful. And I felt awful. And it looked awful. I mean awful. Have it said that word enough now? Of course he wouldn't let me hold the ice on him, so we jumped in the car Brittany Spears style (jax in my lap in the front seat) and raced across the street to my parents house. I stayed where my parents could not see his eye while I calmly told them in my singsong voice that "Jax has a booboo, and we are all very calm about it. And we are not upset about it. Don't react when you see it. We just think that maybe he'll let grandaddy put some ice on it." So Daddy was great, of course. He got Jax to lay down on the couch with him and told him a story while he held ice on his eye. It helped a LOT. It looked so much better when we left. I sort of blocked out what it looked like at first, but I can only remember that it was sticking out really far but only bleeding a little. By the time we got back home, Jax was repeating his grandaddy by saying he was a Rocky Balboa boy and laughing every time he said it. Jax Loves Rocky...no surprise there, he is John's son.

Anyway, that's my very dramatic recount of Jax's first black eye. The first pictures came in the form of video below...about 2 1/2 hours after the incident.