We enjoyed a 4" snowfall on Tuesday night, so yesterday I rummaged through the crawl space and dragged out our wooden sled with old-fashioned metal runners, a plastic disc nearly impossible to steer and a wicked fast plastic toboggan.

The hill was packed with kids aged two through upper teens, jostling for space and high on first-day-of-sled-season adrenalin. Within the first fifteen minutes I must have seen ten collisions between sledders and little kids standing aimlessly on the bottom of the hill. But then I saw a horrific crash. We had loaned out our wooden sled to a six-year-old up top. He didn't know how to steer the thing and ran right over a two-year-old girl hanging out with her sisters at the bottom. She went flying and blood started pouring out of her mouth. Her mom was nowhere.

I picked her up and by quizzing her sister, found out mom was in the car. A two-year-old on a sledding hill alone? Ridiculous. So I delivered her to mom, who by this time was running out of the car to scoop up her daughter. In an effort to prevent more of these nasty collisions, here are a few sensible sledding tips from Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh for kids and parents alike. One important tip they do not mention -- after a sled run, walk off to the side of the hill before hiking back up again. Do not walk straight back up the hill, you're begging to be hit.