The great* nail polish incident of '08

*And by "great" I mean "oh great, there's an asteroid headed straight for my house" and not "oh great! We're going to Disneyland!"

Last Friday I decided to make a quick run to Wal-Mart (which is never quick) before Jeremy got home. While there Alexis and I both picked out some nail polish, and being the responsible mom that I am, I didn't let Tyler hold them. Instead I gave both of them to the three year old and continued my shopping. Note the sarcasm in those last two sentences. As I was weaving through the aisles of the store I was vaguely aware of the steady stream of "clink" sounds coming from Alexis' end of the cart, but didn't think anything of it. It was in the bike aisle, headed towards the swim stuff that I heard Alexis suddenly start to cry. Now if you remember my previous post, the sound of her crying isn't too alarming. It was the absence of the "clink" sound that made me nervous. I looked over at her, and there she was sitting in the cart, looking like a purple marshmallow peep had thrown up on her. After repeatedly tapping the two bottles together, she'd finally broken one. I quickly grabbed the wipes and started to clean up the polish that was still dripping all over her, the cart, the floor, and now me. That's when I noticed the glass. Duh, broken glass bottle means broken glass pieces. I picked a piece of glass off her arm just as she reached up to rub her eye. Before I could stop her she gave it a good rub and then let out a blood curdling scream. My first thought was that she had rubbed some polish in her eye and it must have stung, so I decided to find an eye wash station. I hefted Alexis up with one arm and dragged the cart (where Tyler is thankfully sitting nice and quiet) with the other. Then I noticed the little spots of blood coming from just below her eye. That's when I really panicked because I thought she had probably rubbed some glass into her eye.

I quickly ran to find an employee, and she looked up where an eye station was. I started to follow her but she went down an aisle I couldn't fit down, so I went down the next one. When I came out the other side she was no where to be seen. I assumed I wanted to be where the customer service was so I just kept walking, while trying to calm Alexis down and keep her from rubbing her eye more. The employee finally found me and showed me the way to the eye rinse, which presented the next problem. Alexis HATES water on her face, especially in her eyes. I think she would actually rather have a piece of glass in her eye than water. So I had to hold her head above the water and pry her eye open. With the way she was screaming it must have sounded like I was doing something horrible to her, like chopping her toes off. After several LONG minutes and a lot of screaming, we got whatever was in her eye, out. Whew, I was tired.

So we left the back room, and headed out to pay for our stuff. I was 98% sure there was nothing in her eye, as we had had her look all around while we looked at her eye. But while she was sitting in the cart she started to scream again, "it's going to explode! it's going to explode! my eye is exploding!" I kept looking at her eye, and it seemed fine until I touched a certain part on her eyelid, and then she'd scream again. After a few more minutes of that she seemed relaxed enough to lay down in the cart and close her eyes, and eat a snack. Fortunately she didn't have any more problems after that, but if you look at her today she's got a little mark on the outside of her eyelid that's scabbed over, like a cut.

By the end of that trip my nerves were shot; the day before this happened, Tyler fell through the springs of a trampoline, which was not a fun experience either. How am I supposed to deal with these kids constantly getting hurt? It'd be a lot easier on moms if they were made indestructible. Or at least made so their eyes don't explode.

What I'm wondering is, how come, when you have a baby, you aren't required to learn CPR, First Aid, and go through at least 4 years of medical classes before they let you leave the hospital? I'm thinking that would really be helpful.