The Good News is: "He's Fine"

Here's the Bad News:

While waiting for lunch, Witt climbed up on a chair next to the dining table. Not uncommon. Unfortunately, he lost his footing and fell backwards off the chair onto the ceramic tile flooring. Right onto his head. He screamed; both Jeff and I ran to get him. Jeff got there first and then I took him. We've learned that Witt does best if I hold him and Jeff looks him over. (What a mama's boy!)

I figured Jeff would find a big bump and we'd go on with our day, but instead, he found a flat spot. Not just a quarter-size spot, more like the size of a medium cookie. After feeling it I immediately said that I was going to take him to the ER. Jeff agreed. We called the neighbor to watch the other boys. They were here within a minute and we were out the door.

The wait wasn't bad at the ER, maybe 15 minutes before we were taken back to get vitals and give information about his accident. Another 15 minutes and we saw the doctor. He did a quick examine of Witt's head, asked a few questions, and ordered a CT scan.

Soon Witt and I were in a wheelchair taking a ride down to get the scan. He HATED it. They had to put a strap over his forehead and splints on the sides to keep his head stationary. He cried through the whole thing, tears streaming down his little cheeks, but thankfully he remained still enough that only one of the pictures was bad and we didn't have to redo it.

After checking the scans, the doctor said everything looked fine. He commented that the skull is still pliable, even at Witt's age. He said his head should "round back out" within a few more hours. Since they didn't consider it a concussion as he was never unconscious, they would give us instructions on head trauma and said he should be able to resume normal activity.

Now, with any ER story, there has to be some comment about how long the wait was or that there was some mix-up, right? :)

Well, after the final visit with the doctor, he said we were good to go as soon as we got our instructions from the nurse. So, Jeff went ahead and took Witt out to the truck thinking it would just be a couple minutes.

After 10 minutes, I went to the desk and asked if I needed to go somewhere to get my papers or would they come to me? The nurse smiled and said they would come to me. I went back to the room and called Jeff. Another 20 minutes went by. I finally went out and asked a different nurse if she had any idea how long it would be. She looked a little clueless, asked who I was with, found Witt's chart and commented that the doctor hadn't written down that we were ready to go. I explained that the doctor told me I just needed instructions before I could go. She said they'd get the instructions typed up and that she'd bring them in to me.

I called Jeff again. He decided to go grab a burger while I waited. Almost immediately after I hung up with him, the nurse was there with the instructions and a blank look. "Where is the patient?" Ummmm.... he left... a while ago. She said she was supposed to get his vitals, but declined when I offered to call Jeff to bring Witt back in. With instructions in hand, I headed out the door and called Jeff, who was now at the drive-thru. A few minutes later he was picking me up and we were on our way home.

We all laid down for a much needed nap. When Witt woke up, the flat spot was gone. Nice round head again! :) No irritability and ready for a snack.

It wasn't long before he went outside to play with his brothers and ended up looking like this AGAIN!

Life is totally back to normal.

Simple and Slow Fridays - Grace

I intentionally only gave the title of the next chapter in Mitten Strings for God because I wanted to leave it open for interpretation for those of you without the book. Grace could be interpreted as "God's Grace" or "Graceful" among other things, I'm sure. I look forward to reading what you decided Grace means for your family.

I'm going to write about grace as in "saying grace".

We pray as a family before our meals. We hold hands forming somewhat of a circle around the table. Jeff leads. The boys are still working on staying quiet and focusing. (go figure...)

Years ago, when Will was an only child, he and I started saying this little prayer when we were home alone for meals:

God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands, we are fed. Thank you, Lord, for daily bread. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Now that he's older, we've asked Will if he wants to lead the family prayer, and sometimes he does, but always with this same prayer. For his age, I suppose that's fine, but I know many other children say their own prayers from their own thoughts, so I feel kind of bad in that I might have given him the wrong impression that God wants the same repetitious prayer all the time.

Even at night, he won't say his own prayer before going to sleep because he says he doesn't know any bedtime prayers. I've tried to explain over and over and over again that he doesn't have to know a specific prayer; he can just talk to God. But as always, he declines to lead. He'll tell me what he wants me to pray for, he just won't do it himself... at least not out loud... and that's okay.

Prayer is a very personal part of the relationship with God. I know I have a hard time praying out loud, too. I just hope that through praying aloud with him (and the other boys, too) that they are learning that prayer is for anytime and can be said many ways.

On a different note, though, Nathan is so cute when we get ready to pray at night. He closes his eyes so tightly and puts his little hands together up near his chin. He'll say, "Pay, mama, pay." (Pray, mama, pray) I can't help but smile to see him do these rituals (I say rituals because neither eye-closing nor hands together are commanded in the Bible for prayer). It doesn't take more than 5 seconds though for those eyes to open and the hands to start doing something else, but in those 5 seconds he's got me fooled into thinking he's the sweetest kid on earth. :)

Anyway, this subject of saying grace/prayer is a HUGE can of worms. More than I could hope to put down in a single post. I just wanted to take a minute to put down some thoughts on this so years from now I'll see how far we've come (I hope). Will already leads the congregation in song during a short youth-lead devotion before worship services. Talk about a mama's heart soaring! :) Maybe in the next couple of years he'll gain the confidence to lead a prayer, but even if he doesn't, that's ok. That might not be a talent of his.

God will bless each of us as He sees fit, it's up to us to do our part... and that's not always easy, no matter what age you may be.


So, what does Grace mean in your household?

If you wrote a post for SSF on Grace, please enter your permalink in Mr. Linky below. Be sure to link back to this post in your post, too! :)




Join us next Friday for the topic of

RHYTHM

We should have named him Mud...