Crazy Stuff

As explained in my last post, we're really having a good summer. But we have one big problem. My kids seem to have quite suddenly become quite seriously accident prone.

Last week, Silas split his chin open on the floor at a sandwich place (the kids suggested he do a little dance and the concrete was a little wet - we were outside - somehow he didn't catch himself at all - landed right on his chin). We took him to the new little Instacare nearby and they have this great numbing gel that they use now instead of shots before doing the stitches. Silas didn't even flinch as he got his 6 stitches. All the kids were so cute to him and so encouraging and they made him cookies afterwards. We counted our blessings that things turned out so well.

Then a week later (2 days ago - Friday night), Isaac was carrying Liza around on his back (upside down with her knees over his shoulders - not his greatest idea ever) and as he ran past the bar downstairs, she caught her forehead on one of the sharp edges on the stools and really got a good gash. She looked like something out of a horror movie - blood everywhere. We had to take her across town to get someone with facial lacerations expertise to stitch her up with 14 careful little stitches so she hopefully won't have a huge scar. Unfortunately, numbing gel wasn't enough for the deep down stitches they had to do on her, so they had to give her a bunch of little shots right in the wound and it was really painful for her (and me - I almost fainted!). But she was so good about it and ate up the chance to have me and Jared all to herself. Jared and I were signed up to run this "midnight 5K" so we already had babysitting arranged for the other kids - we just ended at the ER for the evening instead of running the race.

Eliza with her nice little row of stitches. Her new nickname is Frankenstein. We took a picture before they stitched her up but it's pretty gross and I don't want to turn anyone's stomach!

The next morning, I was telling my friend about how crazy it was that these two stitching incidents happened so close together - especially when we've really been so fortunate to have so few ER needs with all these crazy kids (we've just had Isaac brake his arm when he was a toddler and cut his finger open a couple years ago - no other big accidents or major sicknesses at all). She said "watch out, things always come in threes." I assured her there was no way anything else was going to happen. But sure enough, a couple hours later as we were gathering things up to head out to Zion for a hike, Ollie and Si were on the exercise machine downstairs (that they KNOW they're not supposed to play on and haven't even been interested in forever) and Si got mad that Ollie wasn't giving him a turn and gave him a shove. Oliver fell off and whacked his chin on the way down on a sharp edge and we were back at the Instacare. We seriously couldn't believe it.

They'll have matching scars!

The really nice staff at the Instacare were pretty surprised to see us again - we'd just been there the afternoon before to get Silas' stitches out and the evening before to have Liza checked out (they sent us to the main ER because they weren't sure they could do a great job with it). They said we must have set a record.

We spent a nice family afternoon in the Instacare waiting room, talking about safety and contemplating having the kids wear football helmets or bubble wrap 24 hours a day. They numbed Ollie up and gave him 4 stitches and he was so brave and good and Silas and Eliza cheered him on (they felt like quite the experts).

So now, we'd really better be done with all this! We're so grateful all these little things were quite easily fixable and count our blessing that we so seldom have problems. The kids are all reminding each other to be careful all the time and everyone's being extra nice to each other today.

These are some really tough, sweet kids. We are so blessed. I was about at my wit's end yesterday though! It feels pretty bad to see your kids get hurt and takes a lot out of me to see them just get shots - let alone stitches - and I couldn't help but wonder if I'm not quite being the protective mom I should be. The kids do a lot of somewhat wild things - but that seems to make them more aware of their abilities and limitations and less clumsy and actually safer than a lot of kids. And they didn't get hurt doing anything particularly "wild" - just doing odd and seemingly not-too-dangerous things. So I'm trying not to beat myself up about it too much but this has definitely thrown me for a loop! I know, I know, all kids get hurt sometimes. But three in 9 days! I don't want to become a paranoid and over-protective mom but the reigns have definitely been pulled in a bit around here.