Staples....and I don't mean office supplies

You know, last week I tempted fate.  How you ask? I paid off our hospital bills from all of McKay's fun visits last year.  Oh, how sweet it was.....to know they were all taken care of.  But (isn't there always a but) all good things must come to an end and this one ended in an abrupt way.  Yesterday I was sitting on the couch with my back to the kitchen counter.  I had just made some popcorn and was sharing it with the boys.  McKay has recently decided to become extremely independent and decided he wanted more.  From what I can piece together he got up on a kitchen chair and leaned it over to the counter, somehow he managed to slip and took some "flying lessons" as my grandpa calls them.  All I heard was a loud thud and then screaming.  He ran over to me as blood was pouring out of his mouth.  I couldn't tell where it was coming from so after I wiped him off, I noticed 2 big cuts in his mouth, and it looked like one of his teeth went through his skin under his lip. All this time, McKay was screaming and Tanner joined in thinking that something was wrong.  I comforted both of them and decided it was a stitches-worthy wound so I drove to my in-laws and dropped the 2 little boys off and headed to the hospital.  When we were in triage, McKay's back was to me and I noticed blood dripping.  At that point I realized he'd cut his head and one look from the nurses told me they would definitely be fixing that. They wrapped some red tape around his head, "an Army Man" headband as the nurse called it, to stop the bleeding.  He loves it so much he doesn't want to take it off even now. (Hopefully, I can coax him to take it off sometime today). They led us to a room we'd been in our previous visits and ended up waiting for 2 1/2 hours before the doctor came in, apparently, 2 in the afternoon is a really busy time in the ER...who knew?  They initially thought 1-2 stitches were needed, but when they cleaned off his chin they decided he didn't need stitches there after all, but it was determined he needed staples to close his head wound. Then a Child Life Specialist came in and asked if McKay would like to see what was going to happen and they brought in a doll to practice on.  He helped clean it's head with water and iodine and hold a stapler that was like the one they were going to use on him.  I really think this helped calm him down. The doctor came back in and decided he wouldn't need a lidocaine shot to numb it because he said the shot hurt worse than the staples.  They held him down and put 3 staples in and I was surprised how brave he was and that he just cried a little bit.  The morals to this story? One, asking for help may be inconvenient to your independence and may cramp your style,  but may just prevent you a lot of unnecessary grief. Two, motherhood is unpredictable...one minute you're relaxing, the next minute you're rushing off to the hospital, and Three, always be extra cautious after you've paid off a medical bill.

Some pictures showing the carnage...and the "Army Man" Headband he refuses to take off...