Not the Year for the Ear!

The little man is just getting over an ear infection and now the middle man has a whole different kind of ear ache. The two older boys were wrestling and goofing around in the living room when we heard some crying. We went in to find the younger of the two with blood all over his ear. After cleaning it up a bit we could see it was split in the front and back but there was a little skin on the bottom of the ear separating the two splits so he didn't have two flaps on his ear. He also had hit the inside of it which was rapidly swelling and bruising. Just to be sure, we took him in to get it looked at. They decided it shouldn't be stitched (thank goodness, it was hard enough keeping him still for them to look at it as it is very sore) but said it would be extremely tender for a while and we should watch the swelling in the inner part. So, although it is a little gross , here is what it looks like.

The first picture is obviously, the front and this is a couple hours later so the split looks closer together. You can see the swollen lump up on the edge going into the ear.This is from a back angle and you can see the bottom where the little bit of skin separates the two splits.

This is from the back immediately after so you can see how split it was. The swelling hadn't started here yet either. IT is way more swollen in the previous pic.

With a little Tylenol he has been running around all day, happy as ever, as long as we don't bump that ear!