My baby has a black eye.  I mean that in the literal sense, not that his reputation was besmirched or anything like that.

I‘m told that he climbed onto a basket (toys are kept in plastic baskets at daycare) and fell off the basket, face-first onto a block.  Apparently there was blood and crying.  Daycare called my husband, who went there and checked on Punkie.  Then my husband called me and told me what happened.  He also tried to warn me that he seemed alright but it looked bad.

I know getting a shiner was very painful for Punkie and being injured for the first time (aside from a couple of bruises) was probably very scary for him.  But he’s okay now.  He was a little clingy for a few days, but he really is okay now.

Now that I know he’s okay, I can admit that this whole episode was very upsetting to me, on several levels.  First, my baby was hurt.  I regret very much that someone else, not me, was there to comfort him and clean him up.  This is a really emotional thing for me, I guess.

Second, I didn’t know until my husband had gone to daycare and then called me.  So, the kid’s mother is the last one to know that Punkie is bleeding from the eye.  We had considered this type of situation when we chose this daycare.  We knew that this daycare was highly recommended and that it was very close to one of us during the day and that one of us could be there quickly if needed.  It all made such logical sense in the abstract.  When Punkie hurt himself, everything went as we had planned . . . and that, it turns out, feels terrible.

Three, I can’t stand that I’m so upset with myself over this – the kid is fine.  For real.  And here I am, three days later, still stewing over it and whining on my blog.  Look at the photo I posted above – he’s smiling.  That photo was taken 3 hours after the injury happened and he’s smiling.  How serious could the injury be?  Serious enough to make me a nut case, apparently.

Oh, but why is he smiling, you ask?  This brings us full circle to my first point – he’s smiling because his mommy (me) picked him up from daycare that day and he wanted nothing more than to be hugged and held by her.  And I wasn’t there when it happened – someone else was.  Someone who doesn’t love him cleaned up the blood, held ice on his face, and snuggled with him.

The good news is that he’s okay now.  He has a shiner that my dad can have a good laugh over (“[Punkie] is a boxer for Halloween,” “you should see the other guy,” etc.) and it’ll be a topic of fond conversation in the (distant) future, when we all look back at the photos from my sister’s wedding and see a smiling, black-eyed baby in a bow tie.