ER

Josh spent a little time at the hospital yesterday afternoon. Nothing major, thankfully. But he grabbed a tag on a cord...a tag that had been stapled on & the staple got hooked through the pad of his pinky finger. It was hard to tell how bad it was; he was bleeding & you could see both ends of the staple sticking through his finger. Thank goodness my mom happened to stop by about 5 minutes earlier--she was able to take care of the other kids while I raced Josh off to the hospital. He was anxious at first & obviously distraught over his sore finger, but calmed down pretty quickly once we were taken back to our room. He didn't want to sit on the bed with me, so I picked him up & held him in a cradle position & rocked him back & forth...and in less than 2 minutes he fell sound asleep! While I was sorry that he was hurting, it was really nice to have some snuggling time with my usually squirmy 2-yr old. After his nap, he woke up in good spirits, and we read some books together & examined some of the things we could see in our room--"There's a laundry basket, Momma!" (it was a little garbage can) "Oh! There's a kleenex!" (a medical glove sticking out of a box attached to the wall). Finally, after about 2 hours of sitting there, the doctor came in to remove the staple. A rather simple procedure & one that probably could've been handled just as well at home, eliminating the $100 copay. But that's life. He cried when the staple was removed, but just as quickly stopped, fascinated by the droplets of blood coming out of his finger. The kind nurse brought in a bucket of soapy water for him to splash his hand around in for a while. Then she further cleaned out his finger, finishing it off with a Snoopy band-aid. Ever charming, Josh said "Oh, thank you for the band-aid!" and about it being a Snoopy band-aid, "This is my favorite!" Safe to say he was a favorite patient of the day. It doesn't get any better than a minor injury & a well-behaved little boy at the hospital!