The man of steel: he glows

Today was Joe's first day back at school.  It was nice being down one child and getting back into our normal routine, but it was kind of empty too.  He didn't really need any new clothes for school, but Ryan found him a few superhero shirts that he loved.  He was so exited to wear the glow-in-the-dark Superman one, he asked it he could wear it to bed.

The man of steel.

"No, buddy.  You can put it on first thing in the morning."
"But I want to wear it when it's pinch dark, so I can see it glow."
You can't argue with that logic, just his word choice.
"The phrase is 'pitch dark.'"
"That's what I said."

Benny celebrated back-to-school eve by jumping out of a grocery cart and smashing his head so thoroughly, that his ear was a mass of dried blood by the time I got home from work.  Ryan is a wonderful husband, and does more than his share around the house. But there are a few things that are not his strong suit.  Putting away clean dishes, transferring wet laundry into the dryer, and wound cleansing (just to be fair, I'm terrible at making sure the dirty diapers get in the outside garbage can, and leaving him messes in the kitchen as I dash off to work).

So I got to spend my back-to-school eve, clamping a screaming four-year-old between my knees and cotton swabbing his ear until I could see what I was working with.  It was pretty gruesome.  There are reasons I'm not a nurse.  All mothers should magically manifest iron stomachs with the birth of their first child, because things inevitably get messy.  He had a lovely puncture wound just inside the curve of his ear.  It was so bad, I flipped it over, checking to make sure it didn't tear all the way to the other side.  It probably could have used a few stitches, but can you stitch the inside of an ear?  Plus, our window of time had passed.  So, I swabbed some anti-biotic on it, said a prayer it wouldn't scar too badly, and sent him on his way.  These incidents or going to have to get smaller and further apart as he grows up, or he'll be missing limbs by the time he's an adult.

Can you imagine God assigning guardian angels to him when he was born?  Being all knowing, he probably took one look at baby Benny, and knew what was in store for him.  I can see him hand picking a pair of angels instead of one.  The most dexterous and most burly guardian angels he had.  If it weren't for them, he'd probably be dead by now.