Tough as nails

We went to the zoo today, the day after Thanksgiving, because the whole way home from Bristol I kept thinking about how fun the zoo would be when it's chilly out and not 1000 muggy degrees in the shade.

It was fun. For a while. By which I mean it was fun for exactly 62 minutes.

We watched the penguins, the baboons, and the lorries. We tried to wake up the koalas. We pretended to be scared of the lions. A nice grandma gave us some of her fish food and we fed the koi. And when the bear stood up and growled and scratched his tummy, we giggled. We were enjoying ourselves immensely. Then the inevitable happened.

Owen hurt himself.

This is not shocking to those of us who see the bright purple and green bruises he ends up with on a daily basis. His head is usually so covered in bumps and bruises he looks like he just went through the spin cycle in a front loader. But this one was especially nasty.

Sometimes my limber little Monkey tries to do downward facing dog, the yoga pose with your rump sky high and your feet and hands on the ground. You look like a human teepee. Except he does it with his forehead on the floor, don't ask me why (Mommy has never managed THAT modification of the pose...) and today he decided to try it at the zoo. On the concrete sidewalk.

I saw his head go forward and his waist bend and before I could say "NO, BABY!" and grab him up he had thwacked his forehead on the ground so hard that I heard the sickening smack of barely-covered-boney-skull on pavement. It was horrible. It took 2 seconds for it to sink in, and he screeched and wailed, and it was terrible for us both.

So we came home early.

Next time, note to self: bubble wrap his head.