Don't call Social Services.... Yet

Deepening even my usual levels of guilt and misapprehension about my abilities as a mother, the last week has featured an alarming number of accidents. First, when Ava broke out in an all-over body rash the day before her first birthday party, I decided that she ought to be taken to the doctors for a once-over before exposing all her baby pals (and my pregnant friends and relations) to some dread disease. Of course, I instinctively felt it was probably nothing to worry about - probably teething rash - but still..... The rash was indeed nothing to worry about and the day would have ended happily, were it not for the fact that Ava liked the doctor so much that she thought she'd launch herself at him with her full force. She missed the doctor but made startlingly forceful contact with the corner of his desk, giving herself a very impressive, bloody, black eye. The party pics are somewhat marred by the obvious attempt not to show her right eye in any of them. During the party, Eden was attacked by the leg of our garden swing, which jumped up and landed on her little toe. "It isn't real, so it didn't know what it was doing", she said in its defence. Later that evening, I laid Ava on our bed with a warm bottle of milk while I rummaged for some clean pyjamas for her. In the space of a nanosecond she had sat bolt upright and dived head first off the bed onto the floor. The bang as she hit the floor in our second floor bedroom was so loud that Paul heard it on the ground floor. The blood-curdling screams that followed were so loud that half the street heard. Paul wasn't entirely convinced by my rationalising reassurances, "If she's screaming it's a good sign; I'd be more concerned if she'd gone quiet..."
"Don't worry," comforted my Dad, later. "It reminds me of how I dropped you on the floor a few times when you were a baby. Once, I dropped you head first on a concrete station platform! Ha! Ha!" Hmmmm, I'm not sure we should be entirely comforted by that.....