So, yesterday was eventful.  I received a call from the school while waiting at the bus stop.  This is never a good thing.  Usually, this is a teacher calling to tell me about something bad that occurred that day, so I braced myself for just another in a long line of awkward conversations.  
This one was different though.

Slugger, with all his majestic grace that he inherited from me, fell getting on the bus that afternoon.  He landed on his knee and managed to tear it open.  The nurse had bandaged him up, and they needed me to go get him.  

When I got there, I found him in the nurses office with blood all over his jeans and his leg splinted and ace bandaged.  She let me know that more than likely he needed stitches.  

As we sat there last night in the seventh circle of hell the emergency room, Slugger asked me how many times he had been there.  Here’s the answer.

The first time was when Slugger was only a few months old.  He had a terrible cold (which I cried over and felt like a fool, but that was my baby!) and while we were riding in the car, he started choking on his own mucus.  Like, he turned blue and wasn’t breathing.  Thankfully, the husband unit pulled the car over, pulled him out of his car seat, and turned him upside down and everything drained out.  I was terrified!  We rushed him to the ER to make sure everything was fine.  And guess what?  It was.  

The second time, Slugger was considerably older.  He was crawling, so maybe, six months old?  The hustler had knocked a candle off of the counter in the kitchen and glass had gone everywhere.  He cleaned it up and went about his day.  

Now I need to pause here and say that he’s terrible at cleaning up broken glass.  I know that now.  

Fast forward to a little later that day, and teeny, tiny Slugger is sitting in the kitchen chewing on something.  I pick him up and hear this ominous clinking.  Like glass against teeth.  I feverishly checked his mouth and only found that it smelled a whole lot like blueberry candle, but couldn’t find the glass.  Again, we rushed to the emergency room where they took x-rays and found nothing (duh, it’s glasss).  We were sent home and told to check his poop.  That was fun.  We never found the glass, but there also wasn’t any blood in his stool.  Who knows what happened.  

The third time,  Slugger was with my grandparents.  They used to watch him for me while I went to work.  He was probably about two or three.  I was at work, you know, working, when I got a phone call from my grandparents saying they thought he broke his wrist and I had to meet them at the hospital.  Magically, once we all go there, he was moving his wrist with zero problems and clapping and singing in the exam room.  Again, some X-rays and we called it day.  Totally fine. 

The FOURTH time, we were shopping in Home Depot (boring!) when I noticed a tick had burrowed into Slugger’s head, right at this hair line.  He was about four (and still my baby!) and I freaked out.  I tried to remove it and couldn’t.  So on the advice of someone else, we took him to the ER.  

Again, stopping here to say, I’ve learned my lesson on this one.  It was ridiculous and totally unecessary.  

We got there, they SCALPED THE TICK OUT OF HIS HEAD, and then had to have two nurses hold him down in a straight jacket to stitch him back up.  When I tell you we left there angry, upset, and exhausted, that is an understatement.  I was so upset at how things were handled and to this day I still regret everything that took place that day.  But all in all, he was, you guessed it, totally fine.

And the fifth time was last night, which I can honestly say was the first time it was actually 100% necessary.  

Want to know how many times Pixie has been to the ER?  Zero.  Zero times.  

This is the best example I have of first child vs every child after them.  

Suck it up, subsequent children.  You’re fine.