The Art of Face-Planting

There's a lot to commemorate this month! Veteran's Day was Monday (make sure to check out our giveaway!), Thanksgiving is coming soon, it's International Drum Month and it's also...Child Safety Protection Month. Of course, as a parent, every day is a day to think about child safety, whether you have a little tyke running around, or you're expecting. When I was pregnant, you can bet I was super careful going up and down stairs (actually, everywhere I stepped) to avoid face-planting or worse. I wasn't jumping into any mosh pits or crowd surfing and I certainly wasn't riding any roller coasters. Now that I have a child, I'm constantly struggling with preventing all those worst-case scenarios involving my now 17-month-old every moment of the day. I do what I can to childproof everything. I've at times considered getting her a helmet - partly for my protection, too. But there's only so much you can do. I'm learning more and more that part of keeping my child from getting hurt involves me not freaking out when she does. When we recently traveled to Europe, the first 3 days of our trip in Stockholm entailed my daughter, Little D, mastering the art of face-planting. It was as if she was a baby again learning to walk for the first time.  (She's been walking since she was 9 months old, so she was pretty darn good at it, we thought.) My husband and I didn't realize that the combination of jetlag, wearing boots and unfamiliar European terrain would be so dangerous. Our little girl had experienced none of these before together or apart. So she went "boom" a lot. At the zoo, on cobblestone streets, in the hotel, on a replica Viking ship. Her face was bruised and cut, and I quietly sulked because I didn't really want our dream European vacation to be filled with photos of D's injured face.

But she was fine, as long as we said, "It's okay," and our actions that followed assured her that it was - versus me screaming or looking at her in horror. So after each face-plant, there was a little crying (sometimes wailing), but within a few minutes she was up, running and squealing with joy ready to risk each boom, because the combination of jetlag, wearing boots and unfamiliar European terrain excited her. I just had to try really hard not to fuss over the owies on her face, or the adults with their owie-free kids, who saw D's and were possibly judging us for letting them happen. Little D was a foreigner and she loved it, bruises and all. And that's all that mattered. From soothing those bruises from face-planting to introducing your baby to moonwalking, we've got a release for that!