what I'm grateful for

Today was one of those long, long days.The kids got up early, Oona didn’t nap for more than an hour, rather than her usual three, and by the end of the day I was convinced Owen’s sole purpose in life was to drive me crazy. He was so ornery today. At one point this afternoon I had so had it with Owen’s sassing me and ignoring me when I told him not to do things, that he’d go ahead and do looking right at me, that I ordered him up to his room. He refused to go, lying on the floor defiant (his version of a sit in to protest demanding Mom’s?), so I picked up all 38 pounds of him up and carried him up to his room where I said in a calm but stern voice ‘you’re staying up here for awhile.’ For once today he listened, I could ear him playing with his Playmobil castle, staging battle with various knights & barbarians for half an hour. Poor Toby’s sick the day before his accounting final, apparently the teacher is one of those pompous, professors from hell who like to go on and on about how brilliant and driven they were back in the day ‘getting degrees from Harvard and MIT at the same time blah, blah, blah.’ So he came home from his review and punctured our tire on the stupid metal ‘curb keeper’ sticking out of the curb in front of our house. Of course nothing is opened today that can meet our needs for the new tire, we can’t buy Goodyear tires because they’re on strike and Toby works for the International union representing those strikers. So I already have so much to look forward to tomorrow, hanging out at the car dealer's with Oona - who’s walking, curious and won’t be stopped.

And I thought last Sunday was bad ... when we went with Travis & Nicole (Toby’s brother & his wife) and their daughter, to get Christmas trees and wound up with nothing but a trip to the ER. We drove half an hour out to this godforsaken mall sprawl area right before the airport (Ikea! Walmart! Kohls! if it’s crappy and throughout the country it’s here) where we stopped to get brunch at Cracker Barrel. Three hours later we emerged and Nicole said that the Christmas tree farm was still about forty minutes further out. I talked to Toby outside and we both agreed it was crazy to try and go to this tree farm with Oona fussy, it was late afternoon and would be getting dark by the time we would get out there and then we’d have to drive over an hour back home – forget it. So we scrapped our whole plan for the day and went back to Travis and Nicole’s house. So within two minutes of being in their living room Oona fell and clocked her head on the leg of their coffee table. Oona was very upset for a few minutes and at first the hit looked bad, like it had indented where she struck the table leg. But it turned out to be a very minor goose egg and scrape on the side of her forehead… just in time for pictures.

Yes, the main purpose of the day and going to the Christmas tree farm was to get picturesque photos of the 3 grandchildren for Toby’s Mom to proudly show of to family and friends. So I’m trying to get a good shot of the three of them but my niece and Oona switch off on crying and squirming off the couch, while Owen makes goofy faces for the camera. Once Travis and Nicole returned and were able to assist in making crazy faces to get the kids attention we finally got a decent shot. Of course we didn’t leave their house before Oona hit her head again on a dresser upstairs and then got whacked in the forehead with a safety gate which Owen slammed so hard it swung back through the lock. We were lamenting poor Oona’s tough day at her Aunt & Uncle’s and thought nothing more of it until we put her to bed and she threw up a half hour later. I called our doctor’s office and knew my concern was warranted when the answering service put my call right through (you usually have to wait close to an hour for them to get back to you) to the triage nurse who told me that I should take her to the ER given that she struck her head more than once.

So Oona and I head to the ER and I’m freaking out every time I glance in the rear view mirror and see her staring off blankly without blinking. I’d grab her foot and shake it to make sure she was alright. When we got in the ER I was nervous they’d interrogate me about her injury to see if I had abused her. I know they have to do that with some injuries and totally understand why, but just the other day someone asked if Oona was a boy or girl, while she’s in a pink floral snowsuit and I blurted out ‘It’s a boy.’ I thought I might uncontrollably implicate myself somehow. Fortunately, I had nothing to stress over. After recounting to the nurse practitioner how Oona hit her head three times I said, ‘I sound like an awful mother.’ And she immediately replied, ‘nothing of the sort.’ Whew! We waited over two hours for Oona to get a head CT. By the time they finally called us it was close to 11; Oona hadn’t napped all day and I was confining her to her stroller because she was so tired and when she tries to walk when she’s tired she’s like a clumsy drunk, I didn’t want her hitting her head anymore – at one point while waiting in the exam room with her I let her stand near the mirror because she likes giving herself kisses but then she started banging her head against the mirror. My worry is like a vampire, just sucking the life right out of me. Just as Oona started screeching uncontrollably a nurse came to get us and we went to get Oona’s CT. She had to lay on a table where her head’s placed in a semicircular cushion. I laid on top of her and they raised the table up and guided Oona’s head to the center of the CT machine. If you haven’t had a CT before check this out. They can be scary even for an adult because the machine is so large and loud. Poor Oona’s eyes were getting larger and larger as the red lights blinked on her head and something in the machine started spinning around with great speed. She looked at me and made the saddest little face before trying to escape but I kept my body on hers and stilled her head with my hands on her neck and chin. The technicians were cooing little niceties to Oona ‘what a pretty baby’, ‘such long lashes’ but you could barely hear what they were saying over the machine’s loud whir. The good thing was the scan went quickly and the results came quickly too. She was fine, we were allowed to leave and Oona was asleep before we pulled out of the hospital.

It was a long drawn out Sunday, the beginning to an exhausting week of working on a rush order for a client I freelance for. But I can make up a week’s worth of not sleeping much, a day wasted, visiting that hospital (one of the 10 best children’s hospitals in the country) I can’t ignore how lucky I am that Oona was okay. The four times I’ve been to that hospital for Owen or Oona the worst thing that happened was an x-ray that showed Owen had pneumonia when he was 2 1/2. Not fun for a little boy, but not life-threatening either, after a couple days of antibiotics he was back to his usual self. I’m so grateful for the everyday miracle of my children’s lives and their health.