Self-inflicted

I believe I've mentioned before about how now that Alli is becoming more mobile by the day, she's going to be getting more bumps, bruises and scrapes. Sometimes it just can't be prevented and is all part of growing up. After all, if we never let them feel a little pain, they'll never learn that life is full of it.

Anyway, anytime a kid gets hurt/injured at daycare, the teachers are required to write up an "incident report" that details exactly what happened, what care/first aid was given, yadda yadda yadda. Alli has only had one of these reports written up in her 6+ months at daycare, and it was just for a bump on the head when she pulled a large toy over on herself. That's my lil weight-lifter... The good part about that situation was that she wasn't assaulted by another infant, otherwise I'd have to whup some baby behinds up in that piece. I can live with self-sustained injuries because that means she was just being curious and maybe a little clumsy (as all infants are) - but if it was another kid just being an ass, we were gonna have words.

Well when I picked Alli up on Wednesday, they had another incident report for me to sign. This time, it was for the bite mark she had on her left bicep. Her teachers explained that they didn't see who bit her, and part of the reason why was because Alli never cried about it. They just happen to look over and there were teeth marks on her arm. They took care of it as best they could, but it didn't seem to bother Alli at all.

Normally when you see teeth marks, you naturally assume that someone else put them there. I was all ready to roll up my sleeves and start tossing babies around, but no one fessed up to the crime. And since Alli can't talk yet, she isn't able to tell me who tried to take a chunk out of her skin. Obviously I'm not going to roundhouse kick an infant for biting my child, so there really wasn't anything I could do about it anyway. But needless to say, I was still a little upset about the whole situation.

I brought Alli home and we played together for the rest of the afternoon while Mommy B was still at work. I happened to notice something interesting about Alli's behavior that afternoon though - she was biting everything she touched. Her toys, the dog's toys, my fingers, the strings on my shorts, everything. I also began to notice the position of the teeth marks on her skin. Then, the light bulb went off.

I think Alli had bitten herself. It made perfect sense... her teachers hadn't seen anyone do it to her, she never cried AND there aren't that many other kids in her class that have that many teeth. I could almost count the teeth on her skin, and it looked very similar to the pearly whites she's sportin' these days. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that Alli's injury was self-inflicted. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself of that so I could sleep better that night. Either way, I'm glad that it didn't seem to bother her at all and the marks are pretty much gone now. Mommy B has been working so much the last few days that she didn't even get to see them! Perhaps that's a good thing...