Frankenbaby

At 11.5 months of age, Elliott has acquired some interesting new skills. He can walk backwards, play peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake, turn pages in a board book and careen into coffee table corners without hesitation.


Wait... what was that last thing, you ask?

Oh, you haven't heard? Well, on Tuesday evening Elliott tripped into the corner of the coffee table. There was the dreaded thump, followed by a howl, followed by me yelling, "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!"

I scooped him up and ran into the kitchen to hold his gushing head over the sink. By then the massive amounts of blood has run into his left eye. There was enough there that we could no longer see any part of his eyeball and feared he'd actually lost his eye.

I wailed, "Is it his eye? Is it his eye?"

Why do we say things twice when panicked?

Doug blotted the blood with something, a paper towel maybe and we were immeasurably relieved to see that it was a mere gash in his forehead.

Brian was running around asking (twice), "Where's my first aid kit? Where's my first aid kit?"

Of course, I got the blame for moving said first aid kit.

As soon as we got the blood out of his eye, Elliott stopped crying. Apparently that was more bothersome to him than the gash. Babies... go figure.

Doug stayed with the Os and assured them that all would be well while Brian and I took Elliott for stitches. When we arrived at the urgent care clinic inside our HMO we were taken back to an exam room right away. After about 15 minutes, I asked Brian to see if he could get someone to help us.

He returned to our exam room and replied, "They said there were four people ahead of us with chest pains, loss of consciousness etc." Well, I'll be damned if old people dying takes priority over the scratch on my baby's head!

I waited about another 5 minutes before I got up in a huff and reached for the door. Brian said, "Don't do it, Beverly." (Beverly is my mom. She has a certain way of dealing with situations like this. Remember when George Jefferson got upset? That's her.) I just smiled and said, "Oh, don't worry."

I wandered around the nurse's station looking lost with Elliott on my hip. We looked terribly pathetic with blood all over us. I pretended to be understanding about the old dying folk and said (while giving them the doe eyes), "Oh. I see. I just wanted to find out about how long it would be because it's his dinnertime and he's getting very fussy."

One of the doctors happened to take notice. He got up and walked over and quietly asked, "What room are they in?"

I walked back into our exam room in front of the doctor and beamed a big, fat TOLD YOU SO smile at Brian. As luck would have it, the doctor was a grandpa 8 times over and was just an awesome guy. He put 4 hideous bright blue stitches in Elliott's forehead and we were out the door. Which was a good thing since we had people at our house waiting for us to cook dinner!

Yep. It was a crazy evening.

The wound doesn't seem to bother Elliott at all. He does get extremely upset when I have to change his bandage though.

He actually looks kind of cute with his bandage, doesn't he? Well, get ready for the ugly truth.

The envelope please. Drum roll.

The winner of this year's Mother of the Year Award goes to..... me!