face-plants and I hate you

[flea]

Last night about 6:30 Casper was sitting on mr. flea's lap, wrestling to get away and eating hummus and pita, and suddenly GOT away and face-planted onto the wood dining room floor. Result: small bloodiness of one nostril, big bloodiness of mouth which as far as I could make out involved both cuts inside the upper lip and bleeding from the sockets of the two front teeth, big fat lip, no tooth looseness. Ice wrapped in washcloth applied to good effect, soothing music put on, and Casper actually fell asleep for about 15 minutes in my arms (as I got progressively wetter from the melting of the ice cube.) She woke when I tried to transfer her to bed, but took Motrin at that point and listened to stories with more ice pressed against her lip, then cheered up considerably as the Motrin kicked in and went to bed pretty much as normal.

This morning mr. flea reports ongoing fat lip, teeth still seem firmly in place, but she refused to eat or drink anything (room temperature milk was too warm, cold milk was too cold, oj popsicle and any food refused.)

mr. flea felt terrible about the whole mishap - blaming himself, and also he is generally much more upset than I am when Casper is hurt. On top of that, we have the ongoing issue that Casper definitely prefers me to him when upset, and even will tell him to go away or that she doesn't like him. Bear in mind, mr. flea stayed home with Casper more than half of the time I worked for 6 months, still gets her up and ready for the day every weekday, and spends most evenings and weekends at home with us. He's not a "babysitting" daddy; we share primary care. But when he says, "I love you," to me, she says, "*I* love Mommy. You love Penny [the cat]." Got that? In Casper's world, Mommy and Casper love each other, and mr. flea loves the cat. This makes him sad. Last night she went from accepting his care to hating him, on and off. Poor guy.

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Poor Mr. Flea and poor Casper!

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Aww, poor Casper's puffy lip and poor Mr. Flea with the kidlet rejection.

If it's any consolation I got that *constantly* with Emmett at that age and had also been a primary care parent. It's tough being Not!Mommy for kids that age.

In fact, the first time Emmett told me he loved me was after a big rejecting incident. He was less than 2 and had disallowed me to get him into his jammies after bath, pushed me away, insisted on Mommy. And his Mom said, "No. You have to be nice to Daddy. You have to love Daddy."

And he looked at her. And he looked at me. And he patted my face gently and said, "Love Daddy."

But it does make it harder. Every once in a while, Emmett would have a brief spell of preferring me to his Mom and I was *amazed* at how much easier it was do all that hard parenting work when you're getting massive doses of unadulatered child love and worship. Way easier than being patient and cleaning up poop on top of your regular diet of getting pushed away.

Of course, Emmett and I are very close now and I expect Mr. Flea will probably have more time to one-on-one with her after the newest arrival.

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

OMG.

Dude. I love Mr Flea. Poor guy.

[zonewombat.livejournal.com]

Oh, poor Casper! Mal just did something similar, and it sucks.

And poor Mr. Flea. He's double-tough to share care for Casper and deal with the rejection.

[burrell.livejournal.com]

Poor Mr Flea, although you can tell him that he's going to soon be her very favorite parent. (Mommy tends to bear the brunt of any frustrations brought on by the new arrival.)