A First

Jonathan is 9 years old and last Saturday he made his first trip to the emergency room. Honestly, I think he was doing pretty well to get to 9 without an ER trip.

It had been a fairly normal Saturday until that point. We got up and went to Starbucks for breakfast before Jackson's Upwards basketball game that morning. Back home, I was watching HGTV (OK I was sort of napping) and the boys were playing in the sunroom when I thought I heard the back door slam. Then Jonathan came into my room crying with his hand to his head. There was blood everywhere. He had somehow hit (more like crashed) his head on the frame around one of the windows in the sunroom. What I had thought was the door slamming was his head hitting the wood of the window frame. He was freaking out, Jackson was freaking out, I was strangely calm. I gave him towels to put on his head and told him to apply pressure, put his shoes on him, told Jackson to calm down (or else), loaded everyone into the van and took off.

Whenever something happens around here, Mark is out of town. It never fails. This time he was at a Scout training camp. I called him to tell him what was happening, then called my parents. When we got to the ER, it was very busy. Most of the people there were sick, not hurt. You could nearly see the germs swarming around. My parents arrived and they took Jackson. They all went home and disinfected themselves.

Jonathan ended up with three stitches in his head. He was incredibly strong through the whole ordeal. It turned out he was more afraid of the idea of the ER than the reality of it. He is a trooper. I wish I thought he got that from me.