"Oh Barnacles!"

Okay, so I've never been a particularly huge fan of Spongebob Squarepants.  I mean, there has always been something disturbing to me about a cartoon in which Mr. Crab lives in Bikini Bottoms.  I'm just sayin'. 

But I've recently discovered how oh-so-appropriate that line from said cartoon: "Oh barnacles!" can be.  Unfortunately.

So Saturday was another beautiful day here in Western Washington.  Seriously gorgeous.  Sure, a little on the chilly side.  But beautiful and sunny.  Cloudless sky.  Jeremy was not scheduled to work the weekend, and I felt like we should get out and do something fun.  Something different.  And so we did.

We went to the store to buy a Discover Pass (required for parking in State Parks now -- but we figure this has it's benefits, since fewer people want to pay for said pass and therefore the beautiful park is not crowded).  We also got picnic stuff.  We stopped at Lowe's for Jeremy to grab some stuff.  And then we headed to the State Park. 

Lynnaea had a blast.  (Well, at least at first).  We started out playing at the playground area.  She threw little rocks, rode the teeter totter and her first big girl swing.  She went down the straight slide.  She even had the guts to climb the ladder for the slide by herself with neither me nor Jeremy nearby.  Which sort of gave me a heart attack and I made Jeremy go over and stand near her. 

This was her first time going up the ladder -- and it was a supervised climb.

Here she is reaching the top and getting ready to go down the slide (Jeremy climbed up behind her and got her seated for the slide).  I never did get a picture of her sliding down, because I was always waiting at the bottom.

Traipsing around in the gravel, which she also enjoyed throwing and putting in the swings ;).

It was nice in the sunshine, because it wasn't too chilly.

Here she is getting ready to put rocks in the swing.  We had to convince her to teeter-totter.

But once she'd tried it, she loved it!

Eventually we started hiking down the trail to the water.  We took our bag of picnic stuff with us.  She wasn't as sure about the uneven, unpaved road, so she liked holding hands.  Until she got braver.  Then she wanted to do it on her own.  Little miss independent.

Unfortunately I didn't take any other pictures.  But here's how the rest of the story went: 

We ate our lunch.  We wrapped my sweater around Lynnaea while we ate, since we were in the shade and it was colder there and she was an ice cube.  She hated being wrapped in my sweater (I'd left her jacket in the car like a dodo...).  But we made her tolerate it.  Then we went out on the dock.  We showed her the water.  The tide was out, so we went down under the dock on the beach and let her grab sand.  And then, after we'd been down there all of 3 minutes, she ran away from Jeremy, tripped, and landed on a barnacle.  And sliced the base of her right palm open. 

Oh my gosh.  Blood.  So. much. blood.  It was awful.  She cried worse than I've ever heard her cry.  I held her hand to my sweater (which by this point was back on me, since we were in the sunshine).  I didn't care how much blood got on it.  In fact, I didn't even think about that.  I wanted to get as much blood off her hand as possible so I could see the wound.  But the blood kept seeping out.  Jeremy took all the stuff and hauled buggy up to the van (a very steep incline which he practically ran up).  I took her to the little bathroom (that lacks soap) and washed her hand off as best as I could.  She really didn't like that, though.  But she had calmed down quite a bit by then and was just looking at it and touching it with her other hand.  Which I discouraged, as I was trying to minimize germs.  We got some toilet paper and I held it to her wound as much as she'd let me.  And that thing just kept on bleeding.  Jeremy pulled up and we loaded her up.  She started crying again, because I drove home and Jeremy sat in the back.  And, being that she was so exhausted and now traumatized, she wanted to sleep.  And she sucks her thumb.  On her right hand.  Which we couldn't allow her to do with it dripping blood everywhere.  So Jeremy wrapped her hand with his sweater and held it.  She finally fell asleep as we sang to her I am a Child of God.  She got about a 10 or 15 minute nap on the way home.  And then we had to wake her up when we got her inside so we could clean her wound. 

Oh so sad.  We washed with soap and water.  It had stopped bleeding during the drive, but started again while we doctored it.  However, we were able to get a better look at it, and it wasn't super deep.  Long-ish (especially on a toddler hand).  But not deep.  We dumped hydrogen peroxide on it -- and she just kept crying.  We put antibiotic ointment on it and a band-aid and paper tape wrapped around so she wouldn't mess with the band-aid.  She wasn't thrilled.  But we managed to get her into her pajamas and I just held her until she calmed down.  And then we gave her a million treats.  Is this parental guilt, or what? 

So far, so good.  We've been praying that there would be no infection.  We clean it and re-dress it every day.  It's looking not-so-bad, and I finally snapped a picture tonight after her bath.

"Oh barnacles" is right, Spongebob.  My baby's first major wound, and it was thanks to a barnacle.  Not my favorite first in the whole wide world.  But I guess this is a welcome to toddler-hood for me!

And just a note:  she has been the biggest trooper ever since.  She doesn't cry when we clean it and re-wrap it.  She watches intently and wants to touch it.  But she lets us do what we need to, and she doesn't cry.  I think she's amazing!