Shiner

It was a harrowing outing Friday when Derek and I took five 8-year-old boys and Lydia to the St. George Art Museum.

Derek and I are the den leaders in Cub Scouts and this is only our third field trip with the group. Before we'd even loaded the vehicles, one scout tripped in our driveway and skinned his knee. Perhaps that blood was a bad omen.

We arrived at the Art Museum and realized neither Derek nor I had brought Lydia's stroller.

Another bad omen?

We'd been inside maybe 5 or 10 minutes when an excited Lydia was scampering to keep up with the group of scouts and she tripped and caught her face on the corner of a bench.

So suddenly she is screaming, I'm trying to get her into the bathroom while Derek corrals the group of excited scouts. There's no paper towels in the bathroom — not that she'll let me put anything near her face anyway. The only thing she wanted was her blanky, which I had failed to bring.

What kind of a mother am I?

After obtaining some first aid supplies from the front desk and determining she didn't seem to need stitches, we decided there was nothing else to do but proceed with the museum tour with the scouts — whimpering Lydia in tow.
It was terrible — for Derek and I anyway. The scouts seemed to enjoy it all.

Lydia seems OK now, though she talks a lot about the fact that her cheek hurts. It's really sad when she lays down to sleep and can't put that side of her face against the pillow. This caused a little bit of crying in the night last night.

And boy did she get attention at church today!

For our extremely shy little girl, this is not necessarily a good thing. But who can blame people for coming up and asking? I would. She looks like she's been in a brawl.

Poor thing.

And apparently the incident made the outing much more memorable for all of the scouts. I'm told they were talking all about it at church today.

Excellent. She's 2 years old and already living in infamy.