Month eighteen: sticks and stones...

It comes at no surprise that there has been a major gap in my recent entries. I have declared month seventeen as the most difficult month since month ten (right before Madeus became a solid walker). We have had one major injury, one medium injury, one truly serious (thank you Angels) moment, and countless minor head injuries. I have just started to let out my breath.

Broken Fingers:

Madeus pulled down the wooden high chair on top of his hand. He was lifting himself up to see if there was any food - not to feed himself, mind you, to feed the dog. I had my back turned, on the phone with my cousin and I heard the thud and screams. At first I could not find where the injury was, and he bled a bit so he was wiping blood everywhere. Four minutes after it happened, Michael walked in the door, and all he saw was the over turned high chair and heard the screams. He had a moment of real panic. It took us forty five minutes to get Madeus to stop screaming. Then we spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to ice his fingers. Note: Madeus is no more complacent even when he is sick or injured. Mike came up with the great idea to give him ice pop push up pops which worked pretty well. Then, Morgan suggested a glove with ice in it, which also did the job for about five minutes. He slept through the night, but when the fingers were still blue we trecked to the city on the first day of gorgeous weather, to spend our morning in the ER. All was well until they tried to x-ray that hand. They attempted to hold him - he wrigled free. They tried to tape his hand- he tore off the tape and threw it. They tried to position it with foam padding, he tossed it across the room. It took us three people, and two tries, to get an x-ray of that little hand. He fought so hard that he literally fell asleep from his crying immediately after, and they were able to splint his fingers in peace. It turns out he crushed both the tips of his pointer and middle finger - just tiny little fractures. It was a remarkeable recovery, one week. The major problem was that Madeus would not let those fingers slow him down. Doing everything with one hand, and the lack of balance that creates, led to countless other minor injuries. We went to an orthopedic specialists ten days later, and he gave us the green light, and also looked at us like we were crazy for coming in with such a minor injury. Yet, good for him, he still charged us $750 dollars for our five minute visit. The things you do for a first child...probably with our second or third child, by the time we realized they were broken, the fingers would have been healed:)

Two weeks later: On my birthday, Madeus ran from behind the stroller diagonally into a four way intersection of a major city street. I dropped the dog leash, the stroller and reached him quickly. Thankfully, a giant truck had caused a traffic jam so no cars were approaching at that moment. I was so shaken I put him in the stroller and began to walk. At that moment I saw a dog walker and went to ask for her card because I obviously cannot handle the dog, baby. and stroller very well. Mahna Mahna lunged at her dog and pulled my arm, the stroller flipped, and Madeus hit his head hard on the concrete. I do not think I will ever be able to get that sound out of my head, I was afraid to lift the stroller to find what had happened. I cried for three hours straight. Michael had to come home from work. We were on concussion watch all night. Yep, it was a good birthday.

I am able to write this now, almost one month later, because things have finally seemed to calm down a bit. Do not get me wrong, Madeus has not calmed down. He is climbing on everything, windows, tables, couches, beds, etc but he is sturdier and seems to fall better. He also stays in the stroller now until we reach our destination and seems more inclined to hold my hand when we walk. I am breathing a little easier now, but when I go to the park in the afternoon with him and see the five and six year old boys racing and trying to knock each other off their bikes around jagged rock corners, I feel the inevitable anxiety set in.