I never thought that this was something that I'd obsess about, but it is. Fingernails....Yeah that's right I said fingernails.* For a good portion of my pregnancy I was convinced that Molly was trying to claw her way out from the inside, and now I've determined that she was. Almost immediately after birth nurses, friends and family gave us tips on how to keep those nails nice and short: bite them off, use baby nail scissors, use your own clippers, file them, etc. etc. And for a while I thought we had it under control.
I clip and file Jack's nails, generally in the late afternoon, when he's about to go into a food coma (AKA his 3pm nap). Molly is trickier, she's really flinchy and as someone who is more of a fan of screaming herself to sleep than going quietly tired nail trimming isn't a viable option. No matter how I've timed it she gets angry and the manicure ends up happening several times over the course of a day and sometimes ends in tears - sometimes hers, sometimes mine.**
Dealing with their nails is a constant battle, despite trimming two or three times a week I'll often greet Jack in the morning to find his face scratched up as if he'd just been in a knife fight with Freddy Krueger. It seems both children have developed my strong, fast growing fingernails.***
Two days ago after an epic nail clipping battle with Molly she tried to smack the mini clippers out of my hands mid-cut and I nicked the tip of her finger. She was angry, so I stopped my work on her pointy scissor-hands, comforted her and put her in her swing while I made up some food for her. It turns out the little nick didn't stop bleeding and I didn't realize it. I looked back over at her to find her sucking a bloody finger and rubbing it all over her face.**** After a panicked phone call to my parents we determined that band-aids were too small and a choking hazard, so that's why my daughter had a bloody sock on her hand.
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*Juno MacGuff: The-the baby? I don't really know much about it other than, I mean, it has fingernails, allegedly.
Bren: Nails, really?
Juno MacGuff: Yeah!
**About two months ago I called my parents, practically in tears, proclaiming that Molly and I were fighting and that I needed a break immediately. She had poked me in the eye while I was trimming her nails and my eye had swollen shut. My parents, thankfully, gave me a break that afternoon.
***Chris always harasses me about how I let my nails (specifically my pinky nails) grow too long and how they "look creepy". I'd always dismissed him until two years ago when I went for a manicure and the Esthetician asked me if I wanted to keep my cocaine nails.
*****Horrifying, yet slightly reminiscent of Kirsten Dunst as Claudia in Interview with a Vampire, except without any teeth.
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