There’s nothing like the eminent approach of a picture-taking holiday to bring out the klutz in my kids.

On Monday, Mireya decided she’d wake up in full wildcat mode. She was playing at growling us all away, kicking and being some sort of crazed and possibly rabid animal. I’ve learned long ago to play along or else be prepared to have these theatrics last three months instead of three days.

So we were all playing along. We cringed from the wildcat, ducked the kicks, screamed in terror from the growls. The wildcat hissed all the way to the breakfast table where she suddenly bounded from her seat and swirled to attack.

And slammed her head right into the wall.

We all held our breath in stunned silence as she fled the room in quiet haste. She’s the child that never cries if she’s really hurt. At least, not right away.

I rushed into the room, unaware of how hard she’d hit. I was trying to coax her back to breakfast when her sister walked into the room and gasped.

“Look at her head!”

There it was, pulsing like an angry red wild cat, a softball-sized goose egg with a serious bruised stripe coming down her forehead.

We iced it, successfully getting it back to the size of a baseball, and I wondered briefly how she’d look in bangs.

She is keeping up the fine tradition of her sister, who for three major holidays in a row managed to score a fat lip, her own goose egg and a scraped chin and nose. For two years, she looked like a poster child for Band Aids.

It’s gotten to the point that I’m seriously thinking of getting a plastic surgeon, or perhaps a makeup artist, on retainer.

Given the danger, as the next picture taking season approaches, I’m considering several possible remedies:

Wrapping them in bubble wrap for one month.

Limiting their movement to crawling along carpeted hallways.

Investing in stunt doubles.

Purchasing a full photo editing suite of software for my computer so I can erase the boo-boos (and maybe a few gray hairs on a frazzled mommy, too).

Guess I’ll go with the last one. Gigantic goose eggs and bloody scrapes are part of being a kid, but I would like to keep them out of the scrapbook. Otherwise it’ll look like the scrapbook from some strange family episode of “Survivor.”