A Trip to the Emergency Room

What an afternoon it has been! I picked Nicholas up from school and we got some groceries to make jambalaya for dinner tonight. As I was unloading the groceries, I heard Nicholas cry out from inside the house. I'm not sure how it happened but he fell into the corner of the wall and gashed his head really bad. Lots of blood and, to my untrained-mommy-panicked eye, it looked like the cut was deep enough to see the bone underneath!

So we rushed off to the emergency room. Nicholas was crying and holding a towel to his head to control the bleeding and Rachel was starting to get fussy for a feeding and a nap. I got to the ER and had to carry my 45 pound little boy with one hand while I pushed Rachel in the stroller with the other hand from the parking lot, up the ramp, and into the ER waiting room. There's no limit to what a mom can do when she has to! But I have to admit that I was so relieved when Stuart showed up at the ER!

Here's my brave little guy as we were waiting for the doctor to come see him.



The nurses put some kind of liquid anesthesia on the wound, covered it with a bandage, and said that it would feel numb in about 30 minutes or so. Then she gave him some stickers. Nicholas was very brave and handled himself like a courageous big boy. The purple popsicle might have helped too!



Nicholas ended up getting 7 staples in his scalp and they will stay in for about a week.



After the procedure, the nurse brought him more stickers and some vanilla ice cream. As we were leaving, I noticed that the corners in the hospital have these nice padded edges. I wonder if we should look into getting these in our house to prevent future trips to the ER. Hopefully they come in other colors...

Bullies on the Playground

Today we went looking for a fun park to play at after school. I had to go by the post office so we went just down the street from there to the playground near the fields where we played Blastball last year. There were some kids out on the playground so Nicholas was excited to stop there. I sat on a bench with Rachel while Nicholas climbed on the equipment. Soon I heard one of the boys calling Nicholas a baby. One of the other boys told Nicholas that he was in second grade and that he was a big boy. They both continued to call Nicholas a baby and ignored him. I wanted to rush in like a mama lion defending her cub and grab up my little guy but I held myself back to see how he would handle it. He was just fine. He responded to the boy, "Well, I'm in 4 1/2 grade!" He obviously doesn't understand that one's grade is not the same as one's age. Then he thought he would one up them even more and said, "No, I'm in twentieth grade!"

The boys just kind of ignored him and he eventually came over to me. He told me that those boys were being bullies. I told him he was right that they were bullies and that we should probably leave to go find another playground. Nicholas said that he wanted to stay there and maybe the boys would start playing with him. I tried to explain to him that those boys were just too much older to play with and that if he wanted to stay at this playground then he could just go play on another piece equipment by himself. He did but soon the boys went over to where Nicholas was and started climbing up on the equipment. I loaded up Rachel and walked over to them to tell Nicholas it was time to go.

As I walked up, one of the boys had the nerve to come up to me to tattle that Nicholas had called him a bully. I refrained from saying what I was feeling and politely told the boy that I agreed with Nicholas' assessment of the situation. I asked him to think about how he might feel if he wanted to play with some boys on the playground that were 4th graders and instead those boys just called him a baby. I suggested that if they didn't want to play with him then they should just leave him alone and not follow him around the playground. Nicholas came over to me and as we were starting to leave Nicholas again said that maybe we could come back later and the boys will want to be his friend. My sweet but naive little guy! We left but of course we didn't go back. Instead we had a great afternoon playing at Kids Kastle. Nicholas made several new friends and Mommy made a new friend too.

Most of us have had to deal with a bully at some time during our childhood. They can be very hurtful. It's so hard being a parent. It breaks your heart for anyone to tease your child. You want to swoop in and rescue him but at the same time you want him to learn how to handle these tough situations on his own because you know you won't always be there when he's confronted with a bully. All you can do is teach your child how to be kind to others, how to keep themselves safe, and pray for God's protection over them. “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Proverbs 22:6

There is a great book that I picked up at The Source bookstore a while back. It's called, "The Power of a Praying Parent" by Stormie Omartian. The book includes thirty chapters covering different stages and ages of childhood and includes specific prayers to address the issues of that stage. I've found it helpful on several occasions when I felt like I just couldn't put my thoughts together enough for a prayer for my children.

Shhh...Baby's Sleeping

I take so many pictures of my two little ones that I can't keep up with them all. I just found these pictures and it looks like I took them about a month ago. Rachel had fallen asleep on the couch and I couldn't help snapping a few pics of Sleeping Beauty.





Here's one of her sucking her thumb. Nicholas didn't suck his thumb much but Rachel goes to town on hers. She seems to be teething now too so sometimes I catch her gnawing on her thumb or the side of her hand. Teething is no fun...for anyone involved!

How To Draw 101 Monsters

Nicholas and I found a cool art book the other day. It's called "How To Draw 101 Monsters". It give step-by-step instructions on how to draw simple monsters. We couldn't wait to try it out. Nicholas wanted me to draw with him so he picked out some monsters and we each drew them. We drew several monsters in the book including "Goggle Eyes", "Slump", and "Slime",



Here is the artist showing off his work...



Here are our drawings of "Eyeball" and "Medusa". Mommy's are blue and Nicholas' are green in case you couldn't tell.

Learning About Life As An Astronaut

We spent the afternoon in Fort Worth. We started at the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History. They have been working on a complete remodel of the whole museum so they have moved some of their exhibits into the National Cowgirl Museum next door. We specifically went to see the Living In Space exhibit which focuses on astronauts living on the International Space Station.



We started with an interactive video game that let Nicholas choose the items to pack for a trip to space. He had to take into account available space and weight, safety of materials, and other factors that astronauts must consider and he got feedback on the choices he made.



Next we got to play with floating in space. Nicholas cut slits in a paper cup and then placed the cup over some tubes that had air flowing through them and watched the cup fly up into the air. It was fun seeing whose cup would float the highest.



Nicholas got to do some cool hands-on work that the astronauts might have to do in space. He used a robot arm to pick up objects and move them around and he used gloves in a sealed experiment case.







Did you know that astronauts can sleep standing up? Yep! Here's Nicholas hanging out in a real astronaut sleeping bag. They are attached to the wall and once you are in you zip it up so you don't float away. Funny, huh?



Astronauts also have adaptations for going to the bathroom. They can't do their business as usual because everything floats around. So their toilets have a strong suction valve in them and the astronauts have to...um...align themselves with the suction to be sure that everything goes where it is supposed to. Believe it or not, there is a camera in the toilet bowl and they watch on a monitor to see if they are lined up. Nicholas was fascinated with this. The first picture shows him inspecting the camera in the bowl and the second shows his face on the monitor.





After our tour of space, we just had to visit Kid Space which is the children's educational play area of the museum. Nicholas loves to do his grocery shopping there. He was quick to pick up his items and then ring them up at the register. It was hard for me to keep the goods restocked for him before he was filling his cart back up!





Even Rachel had a good time at the museum!



After the museum we went over to the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. Nicholas showed Daddy all of the cool interactive displays and the whisper tubes on the boardwalk. Unfortunately we couldn't stay as long as we had hoped because it was just too cold and windy.