Trips to the E.R.

. A parents most dreaded thing is to have to take their 2yr old child to the E.R. for stitches. This is another wonderful story about Chris and his carelessness. Which I guess you can say started at a very young age. Now I was really young at the time and I don't recall exactly how old I was for this first incident. Now as most of you know Jennifer had quite a scare a few weeks. Aiden insisted on playing on a chair at his grandma's house, being quit careless. After several attempts of Jennifer and everyone else telling him Aiden don't do that your going to fall and get hurt. Well of course he is man, and man does as we please. He fell and hit his face causing him to bit a hole in his upper lip. Man, the smartest creature on planet! Oh by the way I think this is really where he gets his determination, the stubbornness comes from Jennifer. I love you honey. So I am sure you all remember the rest of the story. My son is lucky he didn't have to endure the pain of the stitches.

Now I was saying I think I was like 2yrs old. We went to my aunt Patti's house for the day. In fact she has a daughter that is my age. Well it was ab out the same time I was getting really good at walking. Well I was wondering through her house trying to find something to entertain me. Well appearantly there was this vase on top of a hutch that I insisted on playing with, well after several warnings from my mom and the other grown ups to not play with it I might get hurt. Well the inevitable happens. I end up knocking the vase over which then fell and cracked open on top of my head. Yes that is right I was determined to play with this vase after several warnings that I was going to get hurt and then it happens. Well appearantly my head wasn't as nearly as strong as I had thought. This vase actually gave my a nice little cut across my forehead, which I still have to this day. So of course my mom had to rush me to the emergency room after several failed attempts to stop the bleeding. So a few hours later and a bunch of stitches I was good as new.

So as most of you know I grew up in Sacramento, CA where they have have countless things for families to do. Well somewhere in the vicinity of they have this Mother Goose Fairytale Land. Well every now and then my parents would take us there. Now I know we are all grown ups, but come on . We all grew up in a time where fairytales were always being told to us children. In fact I am sure a lot of us fantasized about being able to be part of a fairytale. Well at this park all of your fantasies come true. I was actually in a fairytale (well at least that is what I thought). Well as we or should I say as I ran carelessly through the park. I would always manage to get hurt and not just any old hurt. Yes, you guessed it emergency room hurt. In fact everytime we would go there, we would leave shortly after to take me to the emergency room to get stitches. Of course everyone else was mad at me for ruining their day. So that is how I managed to split my chin open the first time. It was so bad that I got to a point to where I feared going to Fairytale Land.

Swimming. It is by far one of my favorite past times. In fact I think Aiden enjoys it more than I ever did. I mean this kid wasn't even walking the first time we took him to the pool in Ft. Benning and he was trying to take off on his own. I think he is part fish. So anyways, the best thing to do on a hot sunny summer day is to jump into a nice cool pool. So I vagely remember this. But, my mom took me to my friend Danny's house where we went swimming. Well kids will be kids. We were having so much fun. Well we finally gained enough courage to jump off of the diving bored in the deep end. Now we weren't scared of the height of the diving bored, heck it was only 2 feet off of the ground. We were scared of the deep end. It was like a bottomless pit. You in the shallow end if we got tired of swimming we could always stand up on our tippy toes and stretch our necks out and be far enough out of water that we could easily catch our breath, and then continue on across to the other side of the pool. But, the deep end. We heard stories of kids trying to go to the bottom and never coming back. I mean we were in total fear of this side of the pool. So after a few I triple dog dare you chicken to jump off of the diving bored, and I will if you will. Or the infamous your first. The two of us finally mustard up the courage to jump off of the diving bored, but of course good old mom was right there to make sure we were being safe. As both of our mothers chimmed at the sametime make sure you jump straight off of the diving bored and not to the side. So we did as instructed and jumped straight off into the bottomless pit of the unknown. I remember the first time thinking I would make it to the bottom and push off to come flying out of the water like a rocket launching into the atmosphere. Well let's just say that I never made it to the bottom. In fact I was so terrified that I jumped to the side thinking I could grab the side before getting sucked into the black hole at the bottom of the deep end. Well I did and not only did my hands get to the side of the pool so did my chin. At first it didn't hurt, my chin just felt numb. Then my mom said come here and let me see if you split your chin open. Well no sooner did I get out of the pool blood poored down my neck and all over my body. I was terrified for I knew where we were heading next, that's right to the E.R. More stitches. So here are some of the few wonderful milestone's in my life. I just hope my kids have Jennifer's stubbornness more than they have my determination. Hopefully at our next duty station we will have an E.R. right around the corner. Take care.