"E" is for Emergency Room. Last week or maybe last year, or hey, maybe it was yesterday Sam was running up and down the driveway with his shoes that are a size too big so he has room to grow and with the coordination of, well, a one year old. Our driveway has a lot of cracks and dips and slighty slants down toward the house. This scene had disaster written all over it from the start. At any rate, he made one of those split decisions to assume that you were calmly walking toward him to chase him, as one year olds tend to do. While he was "running away", he slipped and fell on our driveway. I cannot get the sound of his forehead hitting concrete out of my brain. Now some first time moms may agree that sometimes you make decisions because you want to act like the right kind of mom and not go with your first instinct. You care a lot what other mothers think about your split second decision making...unless you are a new mom. A brand new, two month old baby in 
the house, no good sleep since month four of your pregnancy mom will take a baby to the ER because the baby is crying. You don't care, you are delirious. But after the sanity kicks in, you decide the "type" of mom you want to be. My type? My type is probably the kind of mom who has 12 kids and can't afford to care about every little bump and scrape. I wanted to be the laid back mom. So in true, mom of 12 fashion, after Sam stopped crying, I had the "walk it off" mentality. Kids fall. They bump their heads. He's fine. Two minutes later, the swelling began. And it swelled. And it swelled. And my mom said, "maybe you should call the nurse? Shine a light in his eyes or something?" She was right. She's my mom. She's usually right. So good sense prevailed. I had to admit that even though I'm CPR certified (expired), I'm probably not qualified to make a judgement on the serious nature of a blow to the head. I do know my limits. The nurse was finally called.
Nurse help lines. Do you ever notice that you can be discussing something with them such as your child's recent fall in the driveway and they will throw in an unrelated and random question in the middle of the normal ones? Example: When did he fall? Where did he fall? What elementary school did you attend? How big is the knot on his head? Is he acting normal? What is the name of your maternal grandmother? It's as if she's assessing my son's condition and trying to hack into my bank account all at the same time. Weird.The nurse finally said, "go to the hospital". I must have heard, "Pack your entire family and their belongings into a covered wagon and hit the Oregon trail, you are never coming home again." I wasn't sure how long I would have to keep a one year old happy in the ER. I packed three outfits, juice, ten diapers (well truthfully, I always carry that many diapers), 8 cars, a book, a Wiggles DVD (you never know), some snacks, baby tylenol, adult tylenol, a blanket, bedtime bunny, the Speak and Say. You get
the picture. It was three bags worth of baby gear. I hadn't looked that ridiculous since the first holiday at someone's house after he was born.Little did we know that we wouldn't be going to the ER with the gunshot victims and the people with shrapnel lodged in their bodies (as per my mom's concern because apparently she thought we were headed to the ER in Bagdad or Compton). Thank the Lord there was a Pediatric ER. A glorious part of the hospital unencumbered by sick adults and their germs. I felt a little better given that Sam does everything short of licking the floors when he's at the doctor and I let him because its the only time he'll stop crying.
So aside from the four hours of traumatic crying, the betrayed look in his eyes as I was pinning him down on the xray table and the fact that the only thing that held his interest was a sticker on a door that said "biohazard", he ended up being fine. I was told to wake him up a few times at night, which I did. What I was supposed to be looking for, I'm not sure. But I woke him up and he preceeded to look at me each time like, "what the heck? Hasn't this day been hard enough, mom?" All in all, I'm glad I went. The doctor there that night even said to me as he was ushering me to the financial office to pay my $100 copay, "He's going to be around for 120 years, you don't want to take chances." To which I wanted to ask, "Will I be watching the Wiggles for that much longer?"
"E" is for Easter Egg Hunt. The pictures are from the Easter Egg Hunt at the Spring Fling. Of all the activities for the kids, Sam enjoyed flinging his hot dog at me, pushing his own stroller around and stalking the Easter Bunny the best. You can't buy memories like that. We stayed for 30 minutes and left. As we drove out of the church parking lot, I kissed my dream of getting cute pics of egg collecting goodbye. Maybe one day he'll understand mommy's need for the perfect photo opp. Maybe he was just mad because it was Easter and he had to wear corduroy and a jacket.
Happy Spring,
Sam's Mom
