Genevieve gets owees, or hurts, or boo boos, or whatever you want to call them, all the time. This is mostly due to her preferred method of locomotion, which is the sprint, followed by the faceplant. She executes this maneuver on a regular basis, particularly when we go out to walk the dog in the desert.

Our outings normally go like this:

1) Unbuckle the baby from the car seat and carry her over to the trail. On the way to the trail (aprox 20 yards) , she starts squirming and kicking.

2) Put the baby down. Upon making contact with the ground, she takes off like a wind-up toy, sprinting at full tilt towards something only she can see.

3) Yell careful!! several times in her general direction.

4) Watch as some unseen crack, rock, stick, pit, or other desert-related hazard causes G to eat it. She hits the ground, thinks for a second, then decides, based on various indicators (mom’s reaction, her actual pain level, ect.) what to do. Normally, the reaction involves some combination of crying and yelling “oweee” in her plaintive, sad baby-voice.

5) Go over, pick the baby up off the ground, brush of dirt, rocks and other debris, and find out what part of the baby is hurt.

6) Kiss the hurt part(s) to make them better. Crying now stops.

7) Go to step #2. Repeat process.

This goes on for about 20 minutes, then G gets tired and wants to be carried back to the car. What is most interesting to me about the entire process is how her and I have fallen into the “kissing and making it better” part. I don’t really remember when I started doing it or why, but it really works. Now, whenever G gets an oweee, she cries until she gets a kiss, then she stops. I have even caught her making up owees just to get a kiss. Faker.