September 8, 2007

Sore

Wrap your entire house in bubble wrap and foam, and I guarantee you that my toddler will find a way to hurt herself. Lil C was playing in my bedroom while I was blow drying my hair when this happened:

Lil C, meet nightstand knob. Nightstand knob, meet Lil C. Why did she have to hit the knob at that exact spot??? WHY? WHY? WHY?? As if the dive into the nightstand wasn’t bad enough, you know? It took about an hour for it to stop bleeding. It wasn’t a fast bleed, more like a little build up that would drip eventually if not wiped.

I don’t know the last time you tried to dab blood off of a toddler, or put ice on a toddler’s injury but it doesn’t elicit a very cooperative response. Even after finding a Cinderella washcloth and pleading with her to "Please let Cinderella ‘kiss’ your boo-boo" it was pretty much a lost cause.

The good news is that we have no need for purple princess eye shadow when playing dress up, because Lil C has got the natural kind of eye color going for her right now. The gash is a nice burnt red, and the layers of rainbow-like goodness go down from there. Today, we have shades of purple, blue, red, pink, a bit of green and I can almost guarantee that tomorrow will bring with it a bit of buttercup yellow.

We are just one month shy of the big number two birthday, which means that the pictures may have been spared. She’ll look less like an UFC fighter by then, I’m hoping. I guess she just decided that she’s celebrating the NFL kick-off with her own personal flare.

She did this on Thursday. I would have posted about it earlier, but I have been unable to do just about anything without being in pain. My neck is fine. It’s the 100+ jumping jacks, the 50 killer crunches with legs in the air, and the multiple push-ups at the beginning of some classes that are making my life a bit unpleasant right now. It’s all part of the getting back in shape process so I’m dealing; but it’s not really cool when your husband knows he can poke you just about anywhere and you’re going to shriek in pain.

I spent time in karate classes this week working on moving drills, break falls, open hand kata, more weapons kata’s (bo, tekkos, etc.), and some cool self defense vital point striking with both open hand and some small dowels.

Yes, the neck injury girl said break falls. For non-karate-ka’s, practicing break falls means practicing the proper way to fall so that you minimize the potential for injury. Falling in the proper way means going against the natural instinct to break your fall with your hands alone when falling forward, or when falling backwards to go down on your spine, neck or head, all of which could cause serious injury (Trust me-I know). When you fall down on your side, the proper thing to do is keep your body in tight, and make a triangle between your torso, your leg (from hip to knee) and your arm, which slaps the ground a few inches away from your knee. I don’t know who this guy is but he does a pretty good demonstration if you’re interested:

We spent an entire class this week working on break falls, and I was happy to do so. I wasn’t brave enough to start from a standing up position, but I did make it up to my knees and that was plenty of practice for now. We also did karate rolls in class. I sat out for that part because I still need to be careful with my neck.

Although I don’t think that a proper break fall would have helped me when I got injured in July (because I don’t think I even had a chance to exercise proper technique with the way I was thrown), it was definitely a good thing to go over in baby steps, as we did. I did not understand the little nuances of the break fall before. I know I didn’t have the proper angle when it came to my slapping arm. I didn’t know that it mattered where you slapped, and was slapping out perpendicular to my body instead of angled V-like down toward my knee. It was the same with the back break falls. I thought you were supposed to put your arms out in a T position, when a V-position works much better to stop your momentum.

I ended up working out at the dojo for about six hours this week with three different instructors. It feels so good to get back to it, that I can’t seem to get enough right now. My injury break was like being stuck out in the desert. I’ve now found an oasis.