O-U-C-H

Egads! I can't believe I haven't had a few moments to sit and recount this tale until now. It happened on Wednesday...

The kids were all upstairs playing together. I usually shut the bathroom door and the door to our bedroom so I don't have to worry about Tate trying to brush his teeth with everyones' toothbrush, then dipping them one by one into the toilet. The girls are good about making sure those two doors stay closed. However, they also like to open and close/slam their bedroom doors while they're up there. I just know one of these days I'm going to hear an ear piercing scream and run upstairs to find someones' pinky lying on the carpet.

Anyway, all was going well until I heard Tate start to cry. It wasn't a "you took the ball I was playing with" type of cry so I headed up to investigate.

Problem #1: I found Tate in the hallway cradling his left hand against his little body. Uh oh. I quickly ascertained that it did, in fact, have all five fingers safely attached then scooped him up and demanded to know what happened from the girls.

Reese looked honestly clueless. Drue, on the other hand, looked a bit suspicious. "I think he hit his hand", they said. Hit his hand? I wasn't quite buying it as the tears continued to stream down his face. We headed downstairs and I held him close and grabbed his blanket.

Problem #2: He couldn't even bring his little hand up to his face so he could suck his thumb. I knew it must be bad.

I held him for awhile and, again, tried to get the real story from the girls.

Problem #3: Turns out, Reese wasn't in the room with him when it happened so the only word I had to go on was a 3 year olds!

I vaguely remembered hearing some doors opening and closing so I asked Drue if she had shut his hand in the door and she said yes she had. I still wasn't quite convinced.

Problem #4: When David got home a little while later, Tate didn't even lift his arms up to be picked up by his Daddy, aka "hanger of the moon".

That was it. We were off to the ER. I am the Mommy. I want to be with my kids when they are sick or hurt, especially when they have to go to the ER or hospital. However, I am not the one who should be going. I panicked all the way there. What was it going to look like when I carried in my screaming 18 month old but wasn't able to give a clear answer about where he got hurt or what happened? Not good.

Let me interject here that Tate is TERRIFIED of doctors, nurses, hospitals, exam rooms, the whole 9 yards. This amazes me, because I know he is remembering back to the summer when he was in the hospital and it makes me sad that he has been traumatized by that. As soon as he sees the white paper over the exam table or a white sheet draped across it, he goes crazy.

The nurse weighed him then plopped him down on a gurney. He was crying, I was crying, it was awful. She finally let me pick him up and gave our blubbering selves some tissues.

I had to recount my story to numerous people, whom, I'm sure, were trying to scope me out to see if I needed to be carted off to jail and I teared up everytime.

Finally the PA came in and was so sweet to us. I told the story again and said I wasn't even sure if it was his hand he had hurt, or his arm. She grabbed his arm tenderly, said, "Let me try something", then flipped it around and bent it back at the elbow. He yowled, I cried some more, then it was over.

She said, "Yep, I felt it pop back in. He'll be fine."

POP BACK IN?!?!

Apparently his little elbow had been popped out of place!!! She reassured me this was a very common injury among small children. Poor little fella.

I texted David the diagnosis and told him to try and get the real story from Drue. Within a few seconds he texted back, "She said she was trying to pull him up onto our bed and he started crying."

All the pieces fit together. I just felt plain horrible. I felt horrible he had gotten hurt and couldn't tell us what was wrong and that I hadn't been up there to prevent it or help him.

A few minutes after the popping back in fiasco, he was fine. A nurse came in with some stickers and he reached for them with his left hand like nothing had happened. Of course, he was still giving her the evil eye and furrowing his eyebrows at her, but at least he could move his little arm.

As we were gathering our things to leave the nurse looked him right in the eye and said, "Don't worry, in a few years you'll get your revenge on those sissies of yours....".

Oh great...I can't wait.