Off to a Great Start

I realized something strange yesterday afternoon as I finished up lunch with my brother and his girlfriend and waved goodbye to them with a bit of sadness in my heart. My mom had taken off earlier in the morning to care for her brother who is dying. My dad, Nelson and Aaron were on the road to Florida for the Alabama bowl game and Brian and Heather were in NC for a concert. It was me and the kids.

This is not scary because living where I live I am never really alone. But still, after a week and a half of all family all of the time, it was sad to see them go.

I love my family and if you have read this for any amount of time, you know that without a doubt. It's a crazy, fierce kind of love that hurts sometimes, but fills my heart to overflowing all of the time.

It's been a rough beginning to a new year. The uncle I am closest to and have spent the most time with over the years is dying and my mom has gone (with her hospice gifts and a sister's love) to do what she can for him. We are sad, like brings tears to our eyes to talk about it sad. We are also peaceful, because we have faith and so does my uncle.

This morning, as Aiden opened his dresser drawer, a wooden sign he had set up himself fell down and clocked him right in the face. He has a good sized slice across the bridge of his nose to prove it. When we finally got him together, he decided he'd go outside to play. On his way out, he slammed - and I mean SLAMMED - his finger in the door and ripped the fingernail totally out of the nail bed. Painful and also disgusting.This injury took a lot more time to recover from. I’ve always said I could deal with anything but vomit. Today when I took that dangling nail and put it back in place to protect the exposed nail bed, I think I proved my own point. We got him back together and he actually wanted to go outside to play.


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I'm finishing this entry over 8 hours after I started it. I stopped writing when Aiden came back inside from playing and told me, "This is the worst day ever." Then he pulled up his shorts to show me that he had impaled himself on a tree.
With the help of a neighbor, we got the 1 inch long twig out. After numerous calls and a visit to a doctor friend next door, we headed off to the ER. Apparently puncture wounds are a pretty serious thing.

We were triaging with the nurse for the leg when I laughingly mentioned the finger. They were as worried about the finger as they were his leg. A few x-rays later we discovered that his finger was not broken and we had removed all the wood from his leg.

The doctor came back in to irrigate the wound. Two syringes full of saline later I was very proud of my son for hanging in there like a champ. He was much braver at the hospital than he was at home.

I'm sure that at the beginning of this post I had a moral to the story, a reason to record these thoughts but somewhere between that moment of peace and eight hours later I forgot what it was. All I know is that 2011 is off to a banner start.

It can only go up from here.