A few days before Christmas weekend, Nathan and I went to the park to play. We had to "cut it short", as we had a hair appointment nearby that afternoon. We got our hair cut at Al's, where I've gone for years - since before Laura and I were married. Al's a cool guy, and he loves kids. Nathan pronounces his name, "Mr. Owl". He gave Nathan his first haircut last summer, which was stressful! Nathan wasn't sure what was going on then, and was scared of the big man with the scissors! Since then, he's been at least once with me and has grown comfortable with the whole haircut idea. He watches me closely while I get mine done, and I think his desire to do everything "like daddy does" helped. He sat in the big chair, with the cape on, and sat nice and still, watching Al in the mirror as he trimmed him up. The free sucker afterward may have been an incentive, but I only remembered that when, after he was done, Nathan marched over to the sucker bowl and asked, "Can I please have that sucker, Daddy?" Hmmm... Perhaps he remembered those on the way in!? Recently, Nathan heard me joking with Laura about giving him a buzz cut. I didn't realize he was in on our conversation until he asked, "Go see 'Mr. Owl'?"
We left Al's with our cool cuts and went back to the park to play. Nathan has become very comfortable with climbing the steps and going down the various slides from the play area platform. He took off on one of them before I was ready for him, and zipped right off the end onto his back in the dirt. He got over the intial shock quickly, and got up laughing, saying, "Whoah! That's fast, daddy!" We found a small soccer ball someone had left near the fence and we kicked it around one of the ball fields for a while. Nathan wanted to take the ball back to the slides and roll in down. He climbed up to the tall spiral slide and rolled the ball down, laughing. I tossed it over the rail to him, and he did it again. The second toss back to him bounced behind him, down the steps leading up to the tall slide. He would have been fine, but his foot stepped off the step before his hand grabbed the siderail, and he tumbled head first down a few steps. I flew up on the platform and scooped him up, as he gasped for air and cried real hard. I felt horrible for my poor throw of the ball. I held his head to my shoulder, assuring him it was ok, while making sure it was. He started to push away, wanting down to go get the ball and get back to playing. I noticed blood and snot on his cheek and ear, so I cleaned it off and checked his nose and ear. Nothing to indicate a cut or other source of blood there, but then I saw the lip.
There was a pretty bad cut just inside his upper-left lip, but the teeth seemed ok, and the lip wasn't swollen too bad. I was glad there was only a little blood, too. Shortly thereafter, we headed home, where I discovered the blood all over my shoulder (where Nathan's head had been after the fall). I also discovered that freshly cut lips swell up like marbles during car rides home from the scene of the accident! OUCH!
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