Audrey Beatrix: That sort of day

I was writing a short post about Easter yesterday morning, and had it all saved ready to work on in the evening when I got back from all the chores and errands we had to run during the day. As it turns out, yesterday was one of those days in which nothing goes right at all, and a few things go quite drastically wrong. It snowed in the morning, but by the time we set out it had turned to drizzle and dirty slush. Neither of us were feeling it, but I tried to make the best of things. However, everything I tried to do to cheer us both up seemed to fail.

Not even Audrey's gorgeous new boots from Kat's mom Grethe were cheering her up today. But they are totally gorgeous and along with the aran sweater I knit for her, kept her toasty warm and dry.

After a full day of mishaps, she and I were waiting at a bus stop on the other side of town. My mobile phone had died, we'd had nothing for lunch (apparently you can't buy a sandwich in that part of town that doesn't have goat's cheese or shredded beetroot or pickled duck or something in it) and Audrey was teething badly. Since we'd already had to walk a significant chunk of our journey so far due to there being no pushchair space on the buses we'd needed to catch, I decided to fold our buggy down before the bus even arrived, and picked up little Miss Audrey and stood her next to me, grabbing on to my trouser leg. She's a good walker now, and can easily walk along outside while holding on to my hand/clothes/the buggy at a pinch. However while I was folding down the buggy, a man walked past with a small dog.

Now, one thing you should know about Audrey is this. She LOVES dogs. They are the best things in the whole world to her. She started frantically pointing. "Yes," I said, somewhat distracted as I was collapsing a buggy that was laden with bags and shopping and rain covers and blankets. "It's a dog! So cute."

Well, that was it. She let go of my leg and took off. She RAN a few steps towards that dog and just as I made a grab for her she fell flat on her face on the pavement, splitting her nose open and banging her forehead. There was blood. There was screaming. There was crying (on her part and mine by this point).

We were directly outside a vet which I vaguely know through work so I grabbed her up and headed in there, sobbing at the receptionist "Please, I know you're not a people doctor but my daughter fell down outside, please could you help us." And you know what? In keeping with the theme of the post I was writing before - animal people are good people. They brought out some boiled water and cotton wool and we got her all cleaned up, and once clear of blood it didn't actually look as bad as it had seemed at all. They let me use their phone to organise things, we set off on the bus, and by the end of the day she didn't need stitches, she didn't have a concussion, and the health visitor said we did all the right things and just to keep an eye on her. She wouldn't even keep a plaster on her nose, pulling it right off any chance she got.

So that was that, a stressful horrid day in which we got nothing done from our original list of chores. After all that, we just came home and rested, stopping only to buy some blackberries as a special treat for baby (funny story - later that evening I fell over in the kitchen and hurt my wrist. Guess where I landed? Yep, on the punnet of blackberries that I had yet to put away. Totally squashed. Fortunately little lady ate them anyway!).

Today, we try again. Maybe we'll have another bad day. Maybe, Vectron help us, we won't. But Audrey, as always, is an inspiration - to meet things bravely, to carry on running and climbing and wearing our favourite dog pyjamas even after a bad experience.

I feel like I got a few of my motherhood badges yesterday. Tend to my injured child? Check. Totally lose it and forget all my first aid for babies and children training? Check. Cry longer than she did over something that happened to her? Check. Cry on a bus? Check. And there's a kind of strength and community to it all, like getting your badges in Brownies or Guides. So many other women amazed me yesterday with their understanding. I will always remember the elderly lady who sat by me on the bus and cooed over Audrey, and spoke to me so gently. "It's just been a bad day," I mumbled at her. "It's all right, love," she said softly. And I felt that same, tugging feeling of being connected through the generations to the women before and ahead of me.

And for those who wanted to know about our Easter, here is the beginnings of the post I was working on:

We had a wonderful Easter, technically Audrey's second, this weekend. We spent all of Saturday and Sunday at the animal shelter I run for the Easter Bunny Weekend, which went brilliantly. Lots of families came to join us in celebrating rescue bunnies and spoiling them with plenty of carrots and green leafy veg. We had games and fun and learning, and we raised £290 towards vaccinating our rescue rabbits, a really special and meaningful way to celebrate the spring festival.

I don't have many pictures because I was just too busy to take them most of the time! But here are the ones I got: