Penis Biting and Baby Botox Lips

Solenne's a seasoned clutz and one of my kiddies, who shall remain anonymous, is an accidental penis biter (more on pecker pulverizing later in this post. He's going to despise me for this when he's older.)

Our baby girl is tough as hell, even if she does have two left feet. Tougher than her two big brothers. But don't tell them I said so. Let me explain.

Tonight Solenne (who we also call Leni, Leni Benny, Ben Ben and more) majorly biffed twice in a span of four minutes. First she tripped inside my neighbor's pop-up play tent and crashed face-down onto a pointy plastic toy lawnmower knob. Major owie. Her two front teeth didn't knock loose from the impact. Nope, they were just coated in fresh blood. I'll take a smattering of split-lip blood over missing teeth any day, thank you. At least now we know Leni's a fast clotter and can safely rule out hemophelia. Thanks yet again, Solenne, for scaring the crap out of mom so she could inadvertently arrive at a nice-to-know, yet overall insignificant medical revelation.

It took all of 10 seconds or so for Leni's top lip to swell up twice its already plump size. Now my poor little Leni Benny looks like an Orange County Botox bimbette. "I okay, mommy," she assured me between sniffles. How could she not pick up on my panic? A second or two later she bounced back to her Mexican jumping bean self in that damn collapsible tent. You'll understand why I freaked so badly in just a second. Hang in there.

Not five whole minutes later I turned my back on my thumb-sucking, pigtailed marauder for a split-second (How many Child Services investigations begin with lame, unoriginal excuses like that?) when I heard a huge skull-banging thud. I was maybe 10 feet away from Solenne facing the opposite direction when she fell and struck the side of her head against the glass edge of my neighbor's flatscreen TV stand. It only takes a second, as they say. (Who are "they" anyway and where can I hunt "them" down for a long overdue bitch slap on behalf moms like me who care way too much about what "they" say and think?)

As a mother to two fearless boys who constantly flirt with broken bone possibilities except for when they're sleeping, I know all too well the every-mother's-worst-nightmare sound of human cranium clashing against metal, glass and concrete. And I knew it was Solenne. Again!

A few seconds passed before she was able to catch her breath, then she unleashed a tidal wave of panicky crying. I rushed to scoop up her fetal-positioned figure from Diane's carpet while feeling like the worst mom in the history of the world because I was sure she'd re-injured her still-recovering neck. Mark it down for the record that I'm actually happy to say that I was wrong ... just this one time!

You see, a few weeks back Solenne fell out of my sister's RV, hit each step on the way out the door and finally rolled to stop on the welcome mat outside on the asphalt. How sickly appropriate to end up on the welcome mat ... Brings to mind insults like, "Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out." Her injuries could have been much worse but she walked away (that is when she was able to walk seven long days for an active two-year-old later) with only a severe neck sprain and related muscle spasms.

The poor little thing was Velcro'd and taped to a spinal paramedic board, unable to move an inch for nearly four hours in the emergency room while the doctors ordered some 1,400 CT scan photos and a dozen X-rays to rule out neurological damage, bone fractures, spinal problems. The list is too long to remember. The painstaking wait for results was worth being reassured that Solenne wouldn't end up a vegetable for life.

You can easily imagine just how over-reactive a mom can get about her child's safety after a petrifying incident like that. I'm not yet ready to revisit how deeply my heart sank watching Solenne struggle in pain while immobilized for hours on end crammed inside a tightly wrapped contraption that didn't look too far off from a straight jacket. I think the incident scarred me more than it did her. She's young enough to forget. I will never forget. It was her second ride in an ambulance in just under two years. Cross your fingers that it was her last.

This time it was her ear that was wounded. Nothing substantial, though. When I picked her up, she whimpered "My air, my air." I thought she was talking about her pretty hair being messed up in the fall because she has a tendency to be such a diva about her 'do. She pointed at her right ear. I felt like an idiot for not understanding what she was saying right away. It's frustrating when you can't decode your child's needs, especially when they're in pain and seeking relief.

Now she has a slightly swollen, blood-blistered, bruised ear to match her Botox inflated kisser. I irrationally scolded her, nagging sternly, "You gotta' stop falling like this, Leni! No more walking for you!" No more walking? What was I thinking? I wasn't, clearly. She pathetically replied, "K, mommy. No mo' falling."

I just don't know what to do with her. Strap her into the stroller 24/7 where I know she can't budge too much? Cryogenically freeze her and store her in the fridge for thawing at a safer, less clumsy stage in her development? Keep her on a leash tied to my belt loops? I actually own a nifty wrist leash from my mother-in-law that I broke down and used with Kade at busy Gatwick Airport (or was it Stansted Airport?) in London two Junes ago. Apparently leashes (a.k.a. a "lead" if you're British) are quite popular in England, where my mother-in-law lives and originally hails from.

Perhaps Solenne wants to make her point that she might have arrived last but certainly won't stand for least. She has to reel in her attention somehow.

Aiden aptly called his baby sister a "whirling dervish" when he found out about her successive spills tonight. Impressive verbal lexicon for a five-year-old, you might say. Don't get too excited yet. He says he learned the term while watching Robin Williams' most recent flop RV while ironically having a sleep over in my sister's RV (the one Leni tumbled out of while she was less than a foot away from three parent adults, including my sister and me).

You're probably dying to know what's up with "Penis Biting" in the title. Aside from an obvious attempt to use popular search words to gain readership for my new blog ... I bet you can't guess which of my menaces clamped his teeth down onto Daddy's unit during a nasty tantrum. C'mon. Think but not too hard. If you guessed right you could be the lucky recipient of a date babysitting him until he grows out of biting, especially penis biting. Call me. We'll hook it up when your background check clears. No, absolutely don't call me unless you are a family member who owes me babysitting!

Obviously (and hopefully) our little biter didn't know he was biting the very tip of Daddy's most beloved body part. The unnamed is an animal sometimes and presumably went for flesh without mapping out a target. What ?-year-old thinks that far ahead? Well, actually, I could name a few. Any flesh will do when mystery child feels the fury. I don't know what sent him over the edge this time. So many things do. He was playing football with my husband, his brother and his favorite neighbor kids at the time of the drive-by penis biting. Maybe someone skipped his turn or tackled him too hard. Either way, there's no excuse for biting in the first place, especially a firm chomp on the pecker.

Final verdict before I nod off on the keyboard (now 2:21 a.m. and tons of blogspot server errors): For Halloween Solenne can dress up as Botox bimbette baby and our little biter can masquerade as a cross-dressing Lorena Bobbit.