Back to School

Yesterday morning began with an email to Dad:

dear DADY,

I WAs wundering if you cud come to techer night.

love,

ruby

Who can say "no" to that?  So, at 3pm, we all headed into school to meet the new teachers.  Ruby was elated and Eli was more than a little nervous.

The stack of books waiting for Eli on his desk.  (This is when Mom became a little nervous!)

After Eli met his teacher, he was much calmer.  

Instead of a large stack of books, these were waiting for Ruby on her desk!

We also took a few minutes to visit Ruby's teacher from last year.  There were big hugs and a lot of "How much did you grow this summer?"s!

This morning both kids were up shortly after I returned from my walk (about 6 a m).  We started with a fun first day breakfast...

They got ready while I made lunches.  Then it came time for Mom's favorite part-- the first day of school photo session!

The photo session is defiantly not Eli's idea of a good time!

Finally, I read them a post from Momastery called "For Adam".    My most favorite part says this:

Chase – We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care. We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done. We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.

but really, you should go read the whole thing!

Then, my 5th grader asked if he could take our extra school supplies with him.  There's a boy who came to school last year without any supplies, not even a backpack.  He wanted to quietly give supplies to this boy so the teacher wouldn't get mad at him, like last year's teacher did.  Seriously, heart of gold that kid.

We all walked to school together.  Eli walked about a block ahead most of the time.  He insisted on parting ways (i.e. giving me a hug and kiss) about a block from school and then ran off to the soccer field.  Ruby let me walk her a little closer, but not by much.  On the eerily quiet walk on the way home, I marveled at the fact that it was only a year ago that we moved to Minot.  Wow!  How we've all grown!

Mom, emergency!

My kids throw around the word emergency as if it's a common every day occurrence.  I have tried, and tried to explain the story about the boy who cried wolf, but still it's "Mom, come quick!  It's an emergency!" ALL. THE. TIME.

It was a Sunday night.  Jason needed to make a Menards run in order to finish up a project he was working on (and I try to never stand in the way of Jason wanting to finish a project!).  

I was pealing and cutting about 200 pounds of peaches into slices (okay, it only felt like 200 pounds, it was probably more like 20) when I heard those words again: "Mom, come quick!  It's an emergency.".  I put the knife down and walked calmly to where I heard Eli's voice.  I was in no way prepared for what I saw.  Eli's leg was sliced open, dripping blood every where.  What I could see on the inside of that cut I still can't talk about without getting light headed.  I brought him inside the house and to the kitchen while he left a bloody footprint with every step.  I grabbed a kitchen towel, wrapped around him and helped him to the car.  No doubt about it, we were going for stitches.

I went back in the house to find David, who, of course, was running around with no pants on and covered from head to toe in dirt.  Classy!  I quickly threw a pair of pajama shorts on him and buckled him into his seat.  

As I drove to the hospital I tried frantically to get ahold of Jason.  The third time was the charm.  I told him to get out of the store and meet us at the emergency room.  After I hung up with him it occurred to me that I had three children who were going to have to sit and wait and wait and wait in a quiet hospital.  Nope.  That wasn't going to work.  I called my friend Terri, who always answers her phone and... it went to voicemail.  Ok, next.  I called my friend Pam who answered almost immediately.  Luckily Pam lives very close to the hospital and she was also able to "talk me down" like a 911 operator.  She met me at the hospital, took David from me, took Ruby from Jason and was on her way.

For the next five hours we waited, and watched crazy YouTube videos, and talked with other patients, and grew very impatient.  Eli entertained the staff as much as possible with his HIPAA joke.  Oh?  You want to hear it?

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
HIPPA
HIPPA who?
Can't tell you.

So I digress... the shining moment in all of this was when Eli said, "I'm just so glad it was me and not David!".  I got weepy.  I can't say David is the most popular boy here all the time.  He is demanding.  He tends to hit, kick, bite, you name it.  He makes sensory-seeking messes all the time and we sometimes fear taking him to public places.  Still, his big brother loves him enough to endure 14 stitches in his place.  That my friends is love!

After x-rays, 4 internal and 10 external stiches, many laughs and no tears, we were sent on our way (at midnight!). 

After sleeping until 1pm the next day, Eli was as good as new.