Mama (in-law) said we'd have days like this

After Ian was born, my mother-in-law, having raised two boys in the city of Columbus, wisely gave me instructions about how to get to the Children's Hospital ER calmly, and to save an extra garage token in my purse or car to make life less stressful on those inevitable trips. Apparently Matt had one year when they had to make 7 different visits.

In the past six years with our boys, I've made that trip several times now - sometimes for appointments/ scheduled procedures, twice for emergency reasons. Nothing serious has ever come of it, thank you God!

Today thankfully didn't end up with a trip to the hospital or urgent care, but the thought crossed my mind a couple of times. Usually the culprit/victim is Ian, but today it was Caleb. Early this afternoon he looked as though he hyper-extended his back falling in a play area - he was in pain for a few minutes, but then went back to playing normally. He only complained about it once since then. Then this evening he tried to ride big brother's skateboard down the driveway on his tummy, and ended up rolling over two fingers with the wheel. I'm used to the dramatic screaming over minor injuries, but I started looking closer when the scream sounded... different. There was a piece of our driveway that had punctured through the top of one of his nails and was stuck in there. Yeah - ow. I'd have probably been close to screaming myself if it had been me. The cold pack didn't calm him, bear blanket didn't calm him, a bath didn't calm him. I wrapped him up in a towel and just started rocking him, and Ian came in about then. He was such a good helper. He kissed Caleb and brought him Ibuprofen, he brought me the phone (Caleb wanted to talk to Daddy), he brought stuffed animals, he turned on quiet music, he wanted to hold Caleb while I went to get first aid stuff and applied it. Caleb was calmer then, so we decided to try to get some smiles out of him while waiting for Daddy to come home. I happened to have the camera close by:

(by the way, the chunk o' driveway eventually came out, and the finger is sore but on the mend.)