What a Day

I think I've used this title before! LOL But, man, has it been one heck of a day. For starters, my husband left today for a 30-day civilian deployment. He works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and has "volunteered" to go to Fargo, North Dakota, to help because of the flooding up there. "Volunteered" is a tricky word. It means he elected to go - not that he's a volunteer. He's getting paid - and there's lots of extra money, which is why he goes. I "let" him go, because I know these deployments are extremely helpful in allowing me to SAH with the kiddos. Anyway, he originally was supposed to take off around 11:30 this morning. But, there was an administrative mix-up (that's putting it nicely), and he had to go on a later flight. He took off around 2:30 instead. So, there was madness and craziness with that.

I took Abby to get a haircut at 10:30. I take her to a place for kids called Cookie Cutters.We love this place, and our stylist. They are totally focused on kids. They even have a slide inside for kids who are waiting! It's great. Well, usually, anyway. I had to take all three kids because of DH's issues with the travel orders. He had to go into the office to straighten it all out. When we got there, all three kids started playing on the slide. It's kinda high, but all three have been on it before, so I kinda let my guard down a little. While getting Abby situated for her haircut, Natalie must've fallen off the stairs to the slide. The very top is a few feet off the ground. I don't think she fell off the top - I think it was lower down. But, she fell nonetheless. I didn't see it, and felt horrible about that. She had a red mark on her forehead. I got her a sucker to help settle her down, and she snuggled with me and ate her sucker. She tried to run around with it, but I wouldn't let her, of course.

When we got home, she still had her sucker. I put her in her booster seat at the table so she wouldn't try to take off with the sucker. After about 10 minutes, she starts screaming. I gave her some water, she calmed down. I start making lunch, and she starts screaming again. I figured she was hungry, so I went ahead and fed the kids. She took a couple of bites of her food, and then cried and cried. It was really not like her, so I talked to DH and we decided that I needed to call the pediatrician just to be safe. I put her down for a nap first, as she was nearly falling asleep in my arms.

After leaving a message, I started to put Grant down for his nap. During that, DH came in with Natalie in his arms. He said I need to take her to the ER. He spoke with our pediatrician, who gave him a list of things to look for. After they hung up, Natalie started vomiting - and that was one of the red flags. So, we called the ped's office again, and they said just to go to the ER. So, to the ER we went.

At the ER we talked to a few people - triage nurse, other nurse, physician's assistant, doctor, etc. During our talk with the PA, Natalie threw up again - this time all over me, of course. So, they gave her some Zofran to stop the vomiting and some Tylenol with Codene to help make her feel better and make her drowsy for the CT scan. She did very well for that, and really all three kids did wonderfully the whole time. Finally, we got the results - everything is perfect! PHEW! What a relief!

The PA said that sometimes if the brain gets jostled enough all of those symptoms show up even though there's no major damage or anything. She also said that it's possible that Natalie had a very mild concussion that doesn't show anything on the scan. Natalie is fine, can eat and play however she wants, and we have nothing to be worried about. She does have a prescription for the Zofran, so I gave her some before bed. I'm praying she sleeps well tonight - that all of us do!

We spent a total of about 3 hours at the ER. Thankfully, I was able to find a vending machine so I could give my hungry babies a snack, and they had the TV tuned to PBS Kids.

During this time, DH headed off to Fargo. It sucks - we didn't really get to say good-bye. None of us really did! :-( He was very worried - and concerned that maybe he should have stayed home. I told him that he did the right thing. I called him when we got home. (I will say that this made me wish I still had a cell phone. So, I might be rethinking this no-cell thing soon!)