Goodbye Angel Face

So, up until now Nick's always had this little angel face--not that he's an angel, mind you, but he's always had such a sweet little perfect face and perfect skin. He never even got baby acne or any of that. Here he is just last week, pretending to be Merlin (he's addicted to The Sword and the Stone right now)--notice his great improvisational skills. Don't have a Merlin hat? Be creative! Well, all that has come to an end. We went over to watch the game at the Blanchard's house and we were having a great time, until Nick decided to run into the swingset area. He was too far away for me to do anything about it, so all I could do was watch it all happen. He actually ran under Shawn's legs, and I was praying he'd keep running and maybe miss getting hit at all. But, no--he ran under and then pretty much stopped. So, as Shawn swung back, he hit Nick in the back and sent him flying face-first into the dirt. He felt SO bad. He's 5, and kept telling me he was sorry and that he hadn't meant to hit Nick. Anyway, so Nick ended up with a mouthful of dirt and skid marks on his face. No more perfect skin. Mike says it makes him look tough, but he hasn't had to take him to the grocery store and seen the way people look at me. I want to put a big sign on Nick--something to the effect of "No, my mom ISN'T a child abuser." I'm trying to keep Nick from picking at it, so that hopefully he won't end up with scars, but it's proving difficult. Just this afternoon I noticed that a piece of his scab was missing, and I asked him if he'd been picking it off. His reply? "Mommy, I picked it off and fed it to Dally." Sorry for the gross-out details. (Dally is our dog, by the way, and apparently doesn't have a very discriminating palate.)