It's all fun and games until...

someone whacks a baby in the face with a ball.

Yeah, I know it's supposed to be "until someone loses an eye," but those the frat-days version of that saying. Now that there are babies in our lives, we can apparently lose eyes left and right as long as no one is throwing balls near the baby's head!!

Husband, E and I attended a fabulous Labor Day pool party yesterday. It was, according to the evite "family friendly" and many of our friends did in fact bring their kids. It is hard to describe the idyllic nature of the party--there were hot dogs and burgers, with toasted buns, beer and sodas chilling in an ice-packed bucket, and chaise lounges draped with towels, begging to be sun-bathed in. And of course, the vast majority of our favorite people were there.

It was wonderful. During the first year of Ethan's life, we were often sort of, well, not invited to fun gatherings because our baby was so teeny and most people didn't know what to do with us. I didn't take offense and damn, I was too tired to do anything, anyway. Now it's so nice to fit back into the world we knew before, as a family.

You get the idea; the smell of charcoal, the chirping of happy birds, the laughter of people in the pool, playing catch with over-sized, water-logged hackey sacks, Ethan and I in the pool floating along in our mother/son floaty thing. Good times. Until...

SPLAT!!!!! From my left I see one of those water-bloated balls make contact with my baby's face, at full speed. It was like watching a fight scene in a movie in close-up, slow-motion, when the protagonist takes a fist to the temple--except there was no blood and sweat, just chlorinated pool water splattering everywhere.

And then the pouty lip, the red mark on the side of the face and the delayed crying (to put it mildly) that pierced all the happy noise with indignant protest. I don't know who felt worse, Ethan, me or our friend, Mark, who threw the ball.

It was my first opportunity to figure out how to respond when something like that happens. The mama-bear in me really wanted to pitch a fit and tell the men to be more careful and what the hell, there are kids in the pool, blah blah blah. But as Ethan's eye wasn't hanging from the socket or swelling shut and Mark looked almost as upset as Ethan, I did a lot of "It's okay. You didn't mean it. No big deal. He's fine," while rocking and shushing the screaming child.

Of course, he was fine. Moments later, he was back in the pool giggling at Aunt Karen's pool version of peek-a-boo. Good times.