No Scissors for You!

See my baby's sad face?

I got to the school to pick up the kids yesteday, and her teacher immediately stopped what she was doing, rushed over and said, "I've got an incident report for you to sign."

Internally I was thinking, did she hit someone, bite someone, what kind of trouble did she get in? Or who hit/bit/kicked her (since she's never been the aggressive one)? The teacher continued, very concerned and serious, "Amara cut her finger today. She was working on her art project, and I looked up and she had blood all over herself. She wasn't crying or anything, so I didn't even realize anything had happened!"

As she's telling me the story, Amara's running up to me flipping me off -- ok, not really -- but it was her middle finger that was cut, and it was sticking straight up in the air. After seeing that and giggling, I glanced at her clothes -- dark denim jean shorts. They were absolutely COVERED in blood. Seriously, the whole front of both legs were caked -- to the point that it looked as if she had been in a dog fight or something. It was actually quite shocking. Had her pants been light, it would have looked even worse.

This was the first time she's ever had a boo boo that she could interact with -- so she did. Squeezing it over and over, then wiping it on her pants -- that's how they got so messy. Yuck!

As I was oohing and ahhing over her mess, the fact that she was brave, etc., her teacher continued the story. Apparently Amara hadn't told her that she hurt herself. But when she discovered it, Amara's response was, "I guess I don't want a scissors for Christmas!" That just struck me as SO funny.

When I gave her a bath that night -- a solid 3 hours after the incident, it was STILL seeping blood. This wasn't a small cut we're talking about. It was DEEP, and she had literally cut a nice little chunk out of her finger tip. I was actually quite shocked about it. Most of the times I try to convince the kids that they don't need a Bandaid, because God's Bandaid's (i.e. scabs) work better. This time however, I MADE her wear a Bandaid, even though she didn't really want to.

Another ironic twist -- she was so concerned that I was mad at her. I told her that of course I wasn't - I was glad that she was OK and so brave not to cry. And I assured her that it's OK and a good thing to tell her teacher when she hurt herself. She said, "But Mommy, I was messing around with the scissors; that's why I cut myself." She felt so bad. Apparently she had been twirling it around on her finger or something. Who knows. But what an innocent little spirit. I again assured her that I wasn't mad, and we agreed that she learned an important lesson about why she should be careful around scissors.