First Things First...

For once I actually have several things to write about, but I thought it best to go in order. Let's start with my first ever trip to the ER with one of my children. First of all, we should really all take a moment and be thankful that we've made it 3 1/2 years before something like this happened. Lord knows with my boys, we could easily be part of some sort of Frequently Injured Club.

So on to the story at hand. Monday night seemed like it would be a normal evening at the Pennington house. I made spaghetti. Clare and Reese came over to visit. We ate spaghetti. We took some fun Christmassy pics for our Christmas Letter. I cleaned up the kitchen, then got Blake ready for bed. We would have been fine had I not had to go in search for his blanket, but Blake needs his blanket to sleep so in search we went. We found the blanket downstairs, and attempted to reenter Blake's room so he could go night night. Only Owen had been playing with his train set in Blake's room and there were tracks scattered across the floor. I did see them. I'm not blind, but being that my peripheral vision is thrown off my the expanse of my belly, my judgement of space was a bit compromised. My heel hit a track and down we went. Luckily my feet went first landing me on my butt. However, Blake had the disadvantage of my momentum to bring him crashing head first into the hardwood floor below.

Now, my boys bump their heads quite often. In fact, both have taken full-out tumbles down the stairs, but never has one of them shown signs of a true head injury. But Blake had an odd response to the fall, at least for him. It took a moment for him to cry, and then his wailing subsided rather quickly and we were having a very difficult time keeping him awake. Naturally, this behavior concerned me as it did his doctor when he told me to get my butt to the ER (not in those words).

Luckily all was fine. Blake suffered a mild concussion, but is doing quite marvelously today. During his hospital stay, which surprisingly only lasted a couple hours (despite the horror stories) he had to get a CT scan (and was quite the trooper). Once that came back clear, we were free to go.

All that adventure in one night, while I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant, and Blake was still suffering from an ear infection, was enough to send us both into a deep sleep. Kudos to St. Agnes hospital for not making that night miserable. And of course we're all thankful that he's his normal self today. It certainly could have gone in another direction. Kids really are quite resilient, yet at the same time so fragile.

By the way, out of the 50 or so pictures that Clare took, we were able to pin down a couple good ones. Some of you will be receiving said pics along with our Christmas letter within the week. And some of you will be fortunate enough to read it here. It simply depends on if I have or can find your mailing address by Friday. I seem to have lost my list.