"Are you clumsy? Or just a boy?"

That's what the doctor asked Eli when I took him in on Friday to get his chin glued back together. His teacher called me just after lunch to say that Eli had busted open his chin on the playground and she thought he might need stitches.

It was Eli's second big accident of the week. Last weekend, I decided to start taking him out on the greenway since our house isn't on a good street for riding bikes but Eli loves bike-riding. We were really enjoying ourselves until Eli took a big spill going down a hill. He got going too fast and decided he needed to get off and walk, but as soon as he took his feet off of the pedals to try to get off the bike, he had no way to press on the brakes. The bike went out of control, tipped over, and Eli went flying down the hill.

When he got up, he had a ginormous bruise on his eye, skinned knees, skinned elbows, and even a skinned thumb (and he was screaming bloody murder). But Eli is such a trooper, he calmed himself down, got back on his bike, and rode the 3/4 of a mile back to the car. I don't know what I would have done if he had been seriously injured since we were nowhere near our car or any other people.



Yesterday, Eli said he still wanted to go bike-riding, so I took him on a ride through Oakwood Cemetary near our house. I thought it might be less hilly than the greenway, but it turned out to be much more hilly, and poor Eli was very skittish. I really enjoy riding bikes with him, though, so I think we'll stick with it and hopefully he'll be able to work up his bravery again.