Lydia's First Major Owie

I knew it would happen some day. Deep inside I knew I couldn't protect my daughter from all the cuts and bruises in life, but I also wanted to postpone it as long as possible. Alas, I have realized I can't prevent every accident and I learned that sometimes things aren't as bad as they seem, despite the quantity of blood lost. So, here's the story:

As you can see from the picture above, Lydia had a big owie. You probably wouldn't realize it by just looking at the picture, but the offending wound is in the very tip of her pinkie finger. We were in Tucson a couple of weekends ago to visit Max and Carol Angle, a couple I met on my mission. I worked in the office with them for a few months and we became friends. When we moved to Arizona, they invited us to spend a weekend with them so they could meet Michelle and Lydia and we could see Tucson. So, we spent the weekend before school started with them. Here's a picture of me with the Angles:

Lydia was being her usual happy self and running around their house. She loves sliding down the stairs on her belly and I was running after her. She went down the stairs and into the one of the rooms. I followed her and was looking a bookcase for maybe 5 seconds when Lydia found a small trash can and dumped everything on the floor. Whoops. There was a big mess. I took Lydia up to Michelle to watch her while I cleaned up, but Michelle using the computer to order our tickets to San Jose and couldn't watch her. I took Lydia back downstairs, started putting things back in the trash can and thought Lydia could help. Well, the first thing she picks up is a broken light bulb that had somehow missed my attention and she cuts herself in her pinkie.

So, blood starts flowing from it and rush her upstairs and ask for a band-aid. We start to clean it off and it just does not stop bleeding. Of course, her squirming didn't help much. She didn't really cry because of the cut, she cried because we were trying to hold her down. We use their smallest band-aid to wrap her finger, but it seems like it just soaked right through with blood. I began to think, if she's a hemophiliac, why didn't we detect this earlier and how did she get it when there's no history of it in either of our families? This little cut in her pinkie would seriously not stop bleeding! Michelle and Carol were taking care of Lydia, so I went back downstairs to finish cleaning up. When I was done, they had her all bandaged up. It took two band-aids and a couple feet of two different kinds of tape to secure everything so she wouldn't/couldn't take it off.

Later that day we were riding a tram up Sabino Canyon and someone asked if she had broken her finger.

The bandage worked really well. We took it off later that day and the bleeding had stopped and the wound was closed. No infections came of it and she was just fine. We were fine, too. So, that's the story of Lydia's first major owie--just one episode in the adventure of our life!