Most of Sunday was pretty normal. I mean the car battery was dead and my neighbor had to jump start it. But we did get to Sunday school before it ended and after church we went to my mom's for lunch, which is always a welcome change of pace. It means getting home a smidge late for lunch chores but if I run straight from the car to the feed pails all the critters forgive. It was sunny and warm, which makes another nice change of pace.
Trouble was that I was very tired. Ever really, really want a nap? Well, yesterday was one of those days. So after chores I went in the house. Things were pretty quiet, so I figured it was worth a try. I curled up on the couch with a blanket and started to doze off...
"Mom! She's peeing!"
Yep, there was Dilly, standing next to the potty with her pants still on and a growing puddle around her feet.
I'll confess I wasn't the gentlest or the kindest as I yanked off her wet clothes. She's at that maddening stage of potty training when you know she can do it, but she sometimes just... doesn't. After a quick rinse in the tub she was made to sit on the potty for a bit while I returned to the couch. Ultimately I looked at her, and she smiled at me, so I held out my arms and she came for a cuddle. After a while she wandered off, so I resumed my attempt to sleep. Until Tea Rose came and said "Hi!" right in my face. Just.... why? By then I had about 10 minutes before I had to start rice for dinner. So I made a civil attempt to explain to her that the way I felt about sleep that day was the same way she would feel about dinner if she hadn't eaten any lunch: I needed it, and taking it away was akin to torture. She seemed to understand what I was saying.
After dinner and evening chores, I planned to print out some school pages for the week, and upon the kids' bed time, finish up my evening as quickly as possible and retire early. The computer was very uncooperative and the printer even more so, to the degree that after 45 minutes I'd printed 4 pages. The kids were being rowdy but not bad, running around playing. Tea Rose and Dilly somehow ended up on my bed, with Tea under the covers hiding from Bean, and Dilly hopping around and ostensibly revealing her position. "Go away!" was said several times and in varying ways, until there was a thud, followed immediately by a pained cry from Dilly.
"Tea, she's hurt," I said, still trying to wrestle with the computer. "You need to give her a hug and tell her you're sorry."
"She wouldn't go away," Tea Rose protested from under the covers.
"That doesn't mean you get to hurt her," I snapped. "Say you're sorry." As she emerged from under the covers, I looked toward the bed--just as Tea Rose's horrified crying joined Dilly's. There was a puddle of blood on the floor and the shoulder and neck of Dilly's sweatshirt were soaked with it.
I went into emergency mode, which for me means dead calm assessment and Handling It. I picked up Dilly and carried her to the living room. She melted into me so I cuddled her, but I didn't say anything to anybody for a while as I cleared off some blood and got a good look at the hole in her face. It was right on the edge of her eye socket, below the end of her eyebrow. My assessment was that it was very well positioned to blend in with her facial features, but it was too deep to simply ignore. I held a wipe against it, and told Tea Rose to find my cell phone. She, weeping, tried and failed, so I told her to cuddle her sister and hold the wipe against her head. Dilly's crying had almost stopped by now.
I called my parents and then the local urgent care, who, of course, were about to close and told me to go to the ER. Mom and dad are 40 minutes away, leaving me plenty of time to try to find the offending object: What the Heck had Stabbed my Daughter in the Face? There was absolutely nothing hard or sharp on the floor by the bed where she fell. Then I went back to her, needing to change her clothes before we left, and found that she was wearing a necklace with a big metal elephant pendant. It's the most likely culprit I have; if she landed on it at the wrong angle one of its sharp feet could have punctured her face. I can't tell you how many times I've taken that thing off of her... guess I should have thrown it away.
Mom and dad arrived, so I sent the kids to bed. Dad camped on the couch to hold down the fort while mom and I drove down to the pediatric emergency room. And then things finally started going right because guys, there was nobody there. Not one pale waif with emesis bag, not one Typhoid Mary too good for a facemask. Nobody. We got triaged, waited about 20 minutes, and were put in a room. 3 different doctors came, looked at the booboo, and told us that they would apply a lidocaine cream and a mild oral sedative before stitching. The third was versed in cosmetic surgery and confirmed my assessment that the wound was very nicely placed, all things considered.
And Dilly? She was happy as a clam the whole time. She did cry when they squirted water into her wound to clean it, but once she calmed down from that she got to watch Paw Patrol during her three stitches. She handled that like a champ. When it was time to go she was stumbling around a little bit because of the sedative, but in excellent spirits. She didn't sleep a wink all the way home, but talked to herself in the back seat while she snuggled her giant Valentine bear that she was given as a prize.
We walked in the door right at midnight. I put Dilly to bed with some milk and her new bear. Mom and dad headed home with my sincerest thanks, and I went to bed and slept really, really hard until 6:40.
Today she's acting pretty normal other than a couple of extra meltdowns. She leaves her sutures alone (they'll come out Thursday) and took a long nap late in the evening... we'll see how the whole sleeping thing goes... Tea Rose saw to it that I got a nap this afternoon, bless her, and I felt much better. It's a good thing, too, because yesterday evening I saw that the sow is starting to bag up! That means her long rows of teats are swelling, preparatory to having a litter of piggies. I had almost given up on her being pregnant but apparently the boar did his job before he went to the butcher after all. It's good, in that I'm not feeding a barren sow unnecessarily, and I've got a customer who wants 8 pigs in the spring. But it's also occasion for panic because she really needs a new shed before the babies come! Operation House the Swine is a go, which means no rest for the weary this week!
Trouble was that I was very tired. Ever really, really want a nap? Well, yesterday was one of those days. So after chores I went in the house. Things were pretty quiet, so I figured it was worth a try. I curled up on the couch with a blanket and started to doze off...
"Mom! She's peeing!"
Yep, there was Dilly, standing next to the potty with her pants still on and a growing puddle around her feet.
I'll confess I wasn't the gentlest or the kindest as I yanked off her wet clothes. She's at that maddening stage of potty training when you know she can do it, but she sometimes just... doesn't. After a quick rinse in the tub she was made to sit on the potty for a bit while I returned to the couch. Ultimately I looked at her, and she smiled at me, so I held out my arms and she came for a cuddle. After a while she wandered off, so I resumed my attempt to sleep. Until Tea Rose came and said "Hi!" right in my face. Just.... why? By then I had about 10 minutes before I had to start rice for dinner. So I made a civil attempt to explain to her that the way I felt about sleep that day was the same way she would feel about dinner if she hadn't eaten any lunch: I needed it, and taking it away was akin to torture. She seemed to understand what I was saying.
After dinner and evening chores, I planned to print out some school pages for the week, and upon the kids' bed time, finish up my evening as quickly as possible and retire early. The computer was very uncooperative and the printer even more so, to the degree that after 45 minutes I'd printed 4 pages. The kids were being rowdy but not bad, running around playing. Tea Rose and Dilly somehow ended up on my bed, with Tea under the covers hiding from Bean, and Dilly hopping around and ostensibly revealing her position. "Go away!" was said several times and in varying ways, until there was a thud, followed immediately by a pained cry from Dilly.
"Tea, she's hurt," I said, still trying to wrestle with the computer. "You need to give her a hug and tell her you're sorry."
"She wouldn't go away," Tea Rose protested from under the covers.
"That doesn't mean you get to hurt her," I snapped. "Say you're sorry." As she emerged from under the covers, I looked toward the bed--just as Tea Rose's horrified crying joined Dilly's. There was a puddle of blood on the floor and the shoulder and neck of Dilly's sweatshirt were soaked with it.
I went into emergency mode, which for me means dead calm assessment and Handling It. I picked up Dilly and carried her to the living room. She melted into me so I cuddled her, but I didn't say anything to anybody for a while as I cleared off some blood and got a good look at the hole in her face. It was right on the edge of her eye socket, below the end of her eyebrow. My assessment was that it was very well positioned to blend in with her facial features, but it was too deep to simply ignore. I held a wipe against it, and told Tea Rose to find my cell phone. She, weeping, tried and failed, so I told her to cuddle her sister and hold the wipe against her head. Dilly's crying had almost stopped by now.
I called my parents and then the local urgent care, who, of course, were about to close and told me to go to the ER. Mom and dad are 40 minutes away, leaving me plenty of time to try to find the offending object: What the Heck had Stabbed my Daughter in the Face? There was absolutely nothing hard or sharp on the floor by the bed where she fell. Then I went back to her, needing to change her clothes before we left, and found that she was wearing a necklace with a big metal elephant pendant. It's the most likely culprit I have; if she landed on it at the wrong angle one of its sharp feet could have punctured her face. I can't tell you how many times I've taken that thing off of her... guess I should have thrown it away.
Mom and dad arrived, so I sent the kids to bed. Dad camped on the couch to hold down the fort while mom and I drove down to the pediatric emergency room. And then things finally started going right because guys, there was nobody there. Not one pale waif with emesis bag, not one Typhoid Mary too good for a facemask. Nobody. We got triaged, waited about 20 minutes, and were put in a room. 3 different doctors came, looked at the booboo, and told us that they would apply a lidocaine cream and a mild oral sedative before stitching. The third was versed in cosmetic surgery and confirmed my assessment that the wound was very nicely placed, all things considered.
And Dilly? She was happy as a clam the whole time. She did cry when they squirted water into her wound to clean it, but once she calmed down from that she got to watch Paw Patrol during her three stitches. She handled that like a champ. When it was time to go she was stumbling around a little bit because of the sedative, but in excellent spirits. She didn't sleep a wink all the way home, but talked to herself in the back seat while she snuggled her giant Valentine bear that she was given as a prize.
We walked in the door right at midnight. I put Dilly to bed with some milk and her new bear. Mom and dad headed home with my sincerest thanks, and I went to bed and slept really, really hard until 6:40.
Today she's acting pretty normal other than a couple of extra meltdowns. She leaves her sutures alone (they'll come out Thursday) and took a long nap late in the evening... we'll see how the whole sleeping thing goes... Tea Rose saw to it that I got a nap this afternoon, bless her, and I felt much better. It's a good thing, too, because yesterday evening I saw that the sow is starting to bag up! That means her long rows of teats are swelling, preparatory to having a litter of piggies. I had almost given up on her being pregnant but apparently the boar did his job before he went to the butcher after all. It's good, in that I'm not feeding a barren sow unnecessarily, and I've got a customer who wants 8 pigs in the spring. But it's also occasion for panic because she really needs a new shed before the babies come! Operation House the Swine is a go, which means no rest for the weary this week!
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