Averting The E.R. AGAIN!

Yesterday was just not my day. I feel like I spent much of it in some sort of dreamworld, waiting for something awful to happen AGAIN.

I know, you must be thinking, aren't weird and unusual things ALWAYS happening at your house?

You have surely read about my tiny trio's adventures in chandelier swinging, high-wire play-yard rail-walking antics, and even stunts performed on various toy horses that we have.

There was even the incident of Kaiden using his upstairs feet to go downstairs when we first moved into our new house.

Usually, though, these incidences don't seem to happen ALL AT THE SAME TIME anymore.

Well, unless of course one incident is actually a diversion for a bigger and better, more dangerous stunt.

Much like the day when I found Kian tail-gating in the bottom oven, twirling pieces of the chandelier like Mardi Gras beads.

Kaiden used this particular opportunity to give the dining room chandelier a good spin...while he was dangling from it!

What's a Mum to do? I have boarded up the china cabinet, gated off the hallway to keep the babies off of the stairs, inserted plug stoppers into all of the electrical sockets, packed up much of the breakables...

Yet, there are the things that I am finding simply cannot be avoided. I dread these, too.

I have this weird notion that one of these days, I will find myself in the emergency room.

How am I going to be able to explain to the unknowing, unfamiliar doctors and nurses on duty exactly what happened that resulted in one or more of my children getting hurt?

It is one of my biggest fears, really. I just know that they wouldn't understand and that I would end up being accused of child abuse or have something worse happen to us.

I sometimes sit there, thinking about all of those near misses that my kids have, and what I could have done maybe to prevent them.

Yesterday, I had one of those days where things just kept happening. I don't mean hearing that funny metallic noise that means that Kaiden and Kian are on the dining room table playing spin the chandelier, either.

I should have known that I was in trouble before nap time, but I didn't. Kaiden had taken to climbing up onto the recliner arm and perching there next to me while I was holding Vivienne in my lap.

He didn't fall, miraculously enough. I don't know how, but he did manage to keep his balance until I could manage to get one arm around him to protect him.

Kian, meanwhile was practicing stunts on his tricycle which he had walked precariously close to the brick hearth.

It was all good, until nap time, really. We did our usual race for the gate, and then to the bottom of the stairs.

Vivienne was too tired to walk upstairs, yet too silly to allow me to carry her up.

She insisted on my holding her waste while she "Walked up" the entire way. Kian was slowly making his way upstairs, too.

Kaiden had already made it to the top and headed off to the nursery, when it happened.

Kian stopped for whatever reason, and had turned around to look down. In doing so, he managed to lose his balance and started to slide down the stairs.

I had to stand there and try to get Vivienne balanced and set on the landing before I could do ANYTHING at all, really.

Lucky for us, when scary things like this happen, it all seems to happen in slow-motion, so there is plenty of time to think and rationalize.

First instinct was to reach out and try and catch Kian as he slid, but if I had let go of Vivienne, she would have lost her balance and started to fall as well.

I did manage to get her up to the landing (only a few stairs up) and then I basically ran down to try and help Kian.

This is the most AWFUL feeling in the world, knowing that one of your children is getting hurt, but that if you drop everything as instinct tells you to do, that you will harm another of your children by doing so.

This is not the first time that this has happened to me, either. Luckily, Kian managed to stop his fall with his hands and was only a bit shaken and frightened.

I think it actually scared me more than it did him, because he looked at me and told me that he was, "Tough, tough, tough" as he climbed the rest of the way upstairs and headed of to the nursery.

I think I must have just stared at him in disbelief for a moment...I was ecstatic that he was okay, but upset that I hadn't been able to keep him from falling and getting hurt really.

As if that wasn't enough for my day, Kaiden decided to perform another amazing feat while I was trying to get their dinner ready.

He waited until he knew that I was in the kitchen, and his brother Bregon was trying to change a particularly icky diaper of Vivienne's (and she was doing her best to NOT get changed at the time.)

While we were all distracted, he used his rocking horse as a step-stool to try and scale the recliner again.

Apparently, his foot slipped on the plastic of the rocking horse saddle which caused him to lose his footing as he had kicked up to the arm of the recliner.

His head actually made it up to the very top of the back of the recliner, giving an appearance that he was higher up than he really was.

At this point, I had walked into the living room to help with diaper changing, and was just in time to see him fall from what looked like the very top of the recliner onto his back.

He ended up being just fine, but I don't think that I am. I feel awful. These sorts of accidents cannot really be prevented, but it really makes you feel like getting rid of all of the furniture in the house just in case it would help to do so.

Thankfully, the babies are all okay and unharmed. Neither of the boys even has a bruise from their respective tumbles, and each basically got up, dusted themselves off, and took off to do whatever they wanted.

I, on the other hand, have been going over and over yesterday's events, trying to figure out what I could have done differently that might have prevented these things from happening.

I just do not think that the E.R. staff would be very sympathetic to my situation if we somehow found ourselves having to go in for any of my children's bizarre antics.

I am certain that they wouldn't understand my problem of not being able to help one child because I was already holding two of them to begin with, which makes me feel like an awful Mum.

But, for the moment, everyone is really and truly okay, and once again we have managed to avert yet another visit to the E.R. again.