I had a vague plan for today, which as most of you who know me in real life know, that in itself is pretty amazing. I generally don't plan. But today I did because Littlest Mr. turns 9 tomorrow and I had some stuff to get done before it actually happened.
I planned to drop the kids off at school and head home for a hot shower and hot coffee. After that I was going to run around and take care of the last minute errands and be done with those in time for 4K pick up at noon. For the afternoon I was going to make spaghetti sauce and clean the basement. Then have dinner and everyone in bed at a nice normal time.
Now, here's what really happened.
I dropped Little Miss off at school and decided to make a quick side trip to Target seeing as that it's almost right across the street, before heading home for coffee and my shower.
10 minutes into my "Target time" my phone rang. It was Little Mr.'s school calling to tell me he had fallen down the stairs and hit his head. They said he was fine and were sending him back to class. I said great and went back to my "Target time". 10 minutes later my phone rings again and this time it was not what I wanted to hear. It was the, we think you'd better come get your kid call.
So much for "Target time".
Can I confess to how little I am involved in my kids school? I like to let them be as independent as they want to be. I didn't even know how to get into the middle school let alone find the health office. I think the school nurse thought I was nuts when I was asking her. Oh well.
Anyway, I went to get him and this involved going up and down a lot of flights of stairs. First we had to go downstairs to get his books and drums from the band room. Then we had to go up to get his books from his locker. Then we had to go down to get to the car.
As we drove away from the school I called the clinic to find out if I should bring the boy in there for a check up or if I should just bypass and go straight to the ER. Ultimately we went to the clinic for a check up. We got the standard concussion/head trauma exam. That led to the decision we should head to the hospital for a CT scan.
By now, we're creeping up on noon and I've had to make other arrangements for Little Miss to be picked up from school.
We got a clean report from the CT and were sent home with the instructions from our Dr. that if and when he starts vomiting we were to head back to the ER.
We managed to be home about 30-45 minutes before the vomiting started.
I'm not sure if it's sad or practical, but I took the time to eat a meal and pack some bags before heading back to the ER with Little Mr. Sad, meaning I've had enough hospital experience with kids to know it's much easier to do some of those things ahead of time then to get there and then be regretting not having done those or be wondering how you're going to get the things you need.
Anyway, we went back to the ER. That meant a long time sitting in the waiting room because we weren't a crisis situation and he wasn't actively vomiting at that time. Eventually we were registered and had our vitals and taken to a room. There we reviewed our case multiple times with different hospital staff.
Around 3 Little Mr. got some anti-nausea meds and about a half hour later some pain meds. Then we got sent home. Again.
Sometime in the next 2 hours all the adult people came home and traded places. We swapped around the kids and I took one to go run errands. Those ones I meant to do early this morning.
So the birthday kid and I went to Sam's to get the magical birthday cup cakes. Believe it or not, they didn't have any. He didn't cry, but it wasn't pretty. We went off to the Pick-N-Save to look for cup cakes.
The start of the great cup cake quest.
We need 48 cup cakes. The Pick has 'em. Even in colors that Littlest Mr. likes. We're careful with them in the cart. The check out girl and bag boy are super careful with them. I'm careful with the cart. I'm careful getting the box out of the cart. The first box is all in the van, nice and secure.
One last box to go.
I'm being careful.
Yup.
I dropped it.
Thankfully they were partially frozen so they took the fall well and aren't noticeably mushed, but my Littlest Mr. was a little cranky with me.
In the end, I served dinner about 8:30 and tucked the kids into bed around 9. Now, it's almost 11 and the day is nothing like what I had planned.
But, it's OK.
