Picture this - Brant and I are both walking the girls to school today in order to meet with a speech specialist. We walk through the back gate like we have for months. There is a very slight wind as we walk under the 100' pine trees. We both see something out of our peripheral vision bounce back up in the air. Then we hear a scream. Then I scream. Then Brant races over to Stella, picks her up and starts running with her in his arms across the school grassy fields towards the office. I rush Daphne and Fiona towards the office past all of the shocked parents and kids. I recognize the social norm is to ask what happened, but the likelihood that I am going stop and talk to parents/kids when my child is injured is none. We arrive at the nurses station - so much blood - turns out heads bleed a lot. A giant pinecone (maybe or maybe not this one - but we told her it was) fell from the 100' tall pine tree and landed directly on her forehead. Stella had two giant gouges out of her forehead. We decided not to take her to get stitches and applied several bandaids. She is one tough cookie - me not so much. This experience coupled with the head injury from a door jam when she was three (which did culminate in stitches) are leading us to seriously consider a helmet for our youngest.
