Crazy Day In The Life

Did you wake up this morning wishing you knew what it was like to have six kids? Did you dream of the chaos? The fun? The mischief? Well, grab a cup of coffee and let me tell you about my day.

Never mind. Most of my day is remarkably boring and involves me trying trying to do some laundry, stay ahead of the mess, keep the kids friendly, and enough caffeine in my body to keep me functioning.

But after I got out of the shower this afternoon, I found that Ciaran (5) looked a little tired. Weird. That boy never gets tired until he passes out in a mild coma at bedtime. Then I noticed the blood. Fuck. Yes, the word fuck went through my mind. You know why? Because I've been doing this long enough to know instantly that something was wrong.

It didn't take me long to figure out that somehow, my precious little ball of trouble had sliced the bottom of his foot open. I'm thinking he either did it on a piece of broken Christmas tree ornament upstairs (because no matter how many I find or vacuum up, they seem to still be around) or on a piece of glass hiding among the rocks in our egress window in the playroom. He thinks it's fun to open the window and walk around out there. Regardless, I have absolutely no clue what happened. The damn thing hardly bled at all. On CSI it's always so much easier to find the trail!

Checking it out with my nurse goggles ($5.99 at Kmart!) I could see that the laceration went all the way through the fatty tissue under the skin and down to the muscle. This was more than I could handle with steri-strips. Ciaran looked up at me and, clear as a bell said, "God Dammit!" Yeah, kiddo, that's what I was thinking too.

So when his dad got home 5 minutes later, we threw him in the car and took him to the ER. Now, keeping a child occupied in an ER is hard enough. But over 3 hours with a kid with Autism was almost more than we could handle. Damn people collapsing in the hallway. Didn't they know I had an overexcited kid with a gaping wound in his foot?

Finally, he got his stitches. 5 mattress stitches. The Doc was so proud of them, he told me at least 5 times what they were. I got it. Your student loans were well worth it. In fairness, they are kinda fancy. I'm still not going to a clinic to take out stitches when I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself. But here they are!

I'm holding his ankle.  The wound is on the arch of his foot.

And then, just to brighten my day, my daughters showed me their fancy new handshake.  I got their permission to post it. 

Piper is on the left, and Bridget is on the right.  See, you can always find a reason to laugh in our house.  Even on the most crazy of days.