The not-broken nose and the shredder disaster.

On Monday afternoon, Z was running around the house and I was sweeping a bit in the kitchen. The phone rang, and it was Mom, freshly back from her trip to Santa Barbara. I was talking and sweeping, and suddenly I heard two thunks and then crying. I ran to Z, picked her up, got off the phone, and set to comforting her. As it turns out, thunk #1 was her running face-first into a doorway and thunk #2 was it knocking her onto her ass. When she calmed down just a little, I got a good look at her face. And HOLY GOD, her nose was fucked up!

I wasn't sure if it was broken or not, but it was super-swollen and had a distinct C-curve to it. Sweetie got home a few minutes later and he agreed. I called Mom back, knowing that she knows a lot about health issues, and she said she didn't think a kid was very likely to break their nose, since it was mostly cartilage. I called the doctor anyway, and we went in on Tuesday morning.

The swelling had gone down a bit, and now the curve wasn't so pronounced. In fact, from one angle I still thought it looked crooked, but from another I wasn't so sure. The doctor said to wait a couple days for the swelling to go down and re-evaluate. If it was deviated, they'd have to fix it.

Well, as of yesterday (she's not awake today yet), it was a pretty ugly bruise (surprisingly with no black eyes), but it looks more or less like her normal nose, just still swollen across the bridge. Oh, and dark green with bruising. But she's in great spirits. In fact, she didn't cry for long after it happened, either. When I asked her how it happened that afternoon, she answered sadly, "I was walking crazy."

New story:

Yesterday morning I was gardening, and Z was in the garage playing. At one point, I heard her say "Ooh, paper!" I saw that she was looking at the shredder, which we had moved in there at Christmas and forgotten about. I said, "Please don't make a mess with that." But then (dumb mom move of the day) I walked off to continue doing what I was doing. As you can imagine, the next time I walked by, it looked like there'd been a blizzard. I got mad, not yelling, but telling her I couldn't believe she'd done that, it was "awful, horrible!" and I didn't want to be around her for a while.

We agreed that she would clean it up with her dad later, and she apologized, though in a sing-song fashion and with dancing, and I was still a little bent out of shape, but I mainly got over it.

We went to Home Depot about an hour later. On the way home, I told her what a good companion she had been, how nice it was to be with her when I could trust that she would stay by my side, what a good helper and a good listener she had been.

Z: But I wasn't a good listener this morning with the paper.
Me: No, but we aren't all perfect all the time. You're only three, and you're still learning a lot of things. You apologized, and you're going to clean up, and then it will all be forgotten.
Z: I won't forget, because I feel bad for what I did.
Me: I don't want you to keep feeling bad. I am sorry that I got mad.
Z: But it was only because I made you mad.
Me: No, you're not responsible for my feelings. I have a choice, and I guess I chose to be mad.
Z: Well, I understand your feelings.

Damn, right? I mean, she can be such a pain (thank God Sweetie decided to sweep up the paper*, because it was a JOB), but then she shows such emotional maturity sometimes, too.

*He swept it into a pile, and then her job was to get it into the dustbin.