Pain management

Let's review what we learned tonight in our crash course on pain tolerance.

1.) A Hepatitis booster apparently is far more painful than splitting open your lip and gushing blood all over yourself and Mommy's dry-clean only sweater.

2.) For all of AJ's various career aspirations, he would be wise to skip the ones that might involve the sight of blood.

Sydney did a header in the basement tonight, tripping on something and smacking her chin on the sit-n-spin. Which led to biting her lower lip. Which led to a large volume of blood gushing from the two puncture holes. Which led to her brother running up the steps ahead of us screaming as if a monster was chasing him.

Sydney, of course, cried. But it was nothing compared to the dramatics she displayed last week at the doctor's office while finally getting her 3-year check-up and the shots that go with it.

Sydney shrieked in pain and then sobbed in self-pity at the one small syringe prick in her leg last week. She then managed to produce real tears 30 minutes later as she told my co-workers about the horrible incident she'd just endured. Two hours after that, it was a repeat performance as she told Daddy her great tail of woe.

With the cut lip, she cried a bit, but as we continued to praise her for being brave, she actually attempted to giggle as we did our best to stop the flow, put ice on her lip and clean the blood off of her (and me). The only part she struggled with was the ice, so Jeff wisely pulled out a push-up popsicle, which she more than happily kept pressed to her lip as she sucked on the frozen treat inside.

It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in the morning.