Today started out so well.

Both kids slept through the night. In fact, we had to wake them up this morning.

We got up, got dressed, got everything ready to go, and headed out. It's chilly this morning, but beautiful. Penny and I waved to Matt at the stoplight. Alex was calm and collected for the whole ride to school.

We got him to his class, changed his bib and left him in Ms. Gwen's arms, happy and content. I picked up his carseat and herded Penny ahead of me out of the infant/todder room. In the hallway, there's a spot reserved for leaving carseats. I set Alex's down.

"Ow! Ow, ow, ouch! OW!!!!"

I turned around to see what was making the tone of panic creep into Penny's voice. The door to the infant/toddler room had swung shut, as it's weighted to do, and clamped her fingers against the wall on the hinge side.

I jumped to open the door again, and then spent the next five or ten minutes trying to console her and determine whether anything had broken.

Two fingers had skin ripped off the top, one from the underside. They were purpling around the top knuckle and nail, and at first she couldn't move them. Naturally, she wouldn't let me touch them; it was all I could do to get her to even show them to me at first. She curled up on my lap and scream-sobbed with pain.

Eventually, I saw her bend the injured fingers slightly as she pulled them away from me, and a couple of minutes later, as I was putting band-aids over the torn skin, I managed to handle them enough to satisfy myself that they weren't broken. Just the torn skin, and she'll probably have a couple of ugly bruises for a few days.

(And naturally, it's her right hand, so writing and drawing are going to be awkward, if even possible.)

And of course, the pain made her clingy, so it was kind of hard to peel her off so I could leave.

Intellectually, it's her own damn fault. We've told her not to leave her hands in doorways. Especially on the hinge side, where the door acts as an enormous lever to apply pressure.

But that doesn't stop me from being weighed down with mommy-guilt and worry, now, does it?

Sigh. And it was such a promising morning.