It Started Well and Ended Well

But the middle? The middle sucked.

We got up this morning, and even though it was overcast we headed outside. The kids have been exploiting the warmish weather to restrict their activities to swimming and watching TV. Today was the day we were going to break the cycle! We rode bikes, power wheels, roller blades, scooters, and skateboards. We had a blast!

We pretended to go grocery shopping. Maggs bought syrup and sushi. We went on the swings and kicked around a ball. We had so much fun that Fred had to take a little break.

And this? Was all before 10am. When it started to rain on us, we danced around a little, enjoying the soft warm shower. But after a few minutes, I decided to be responsible and bring my kids inside for some non-wet fun. I brought a little plastic slide we usually keep in the basement up to the main floor for Fred to play with, and got the older kids going on a game of hide-and-seek. From my office chair I could watch Fred attempt to navigate the slide while I checked in on Facebook, where I posted this innocent question:

It's 10am and we've already done bikes, skateboarded, scooters, roller bladed and swings. Now what???


No more than five minutes later I got my answer in the form a thud and wail. Maggie had climbed up on the couch to peer over the back in hopes of finding her sister. When she was successful, my evil sociopathic competitive older daughter shoved her sweet, tiny baby sister off of the couch and directly into the coffee table. The back of her head made contact with the lip of the table.

I was playing with Fred in the front hall by now, and didn't actually see this happen, but I got an eye-witness report from Sam. And Lucy can not tell a lie more than twice, so if you ever really want to know the truth about something just ask her three times. (But be prepared. She can be brutally honest. And she loves her pap-pap more than me. Just saying.) Anyway, after repeated questioning she confessed everything. By this time my little Magoo was bleeding all over herself, me and my kitchen, so I grabbed an ice pack and herded all four kids into the car for a good old fashioned trip to the ER.

Thank jebus, but nothing was majorly wrong with her. I was scared out of my mind, imagining that her skull was fractured, and every time I glanced at her in the rear view mirror I thought her eyes looked crossed, so I made her sing the ABCs at the top of her lungs the entire way there. SOB meet us at the front door and, since we were the only people there, we were in and out in an hour. She has a dent and cut in the back of her head, and her Miss Piggy t-shirt is probably going in the trash, but otherwise she is all better.

I punished Lucy by not allowing her to touch anyone for 24 hours. It's not going so well, and when she shoved Sam down and then kicked him, she got sent to bed. At 6:20pm.

HOWEVER! We did get a great big heaping pile of good news this afternoon! I'm not really at liberty to divulge the details as of yet, but needless to say, it made the middle portion of the day seem like it never happened.

Except for the drops of blood I keep discovering in out of the way places on my floor.