Just another Monday evening around here

Yesterday afternoon when Roger got home from work, the boys and I were outside. I was cleaning the van and they were playing. I finished up and excused myself to the kitchen to cook dinner. I recommended that Roger stay outside with them since they hadn't had much time to play outside today. A few min later (I had just BARELY gotten dinner going...) I heard Roger coming toward the house with a kid crying. Not altogether unusual, Aaron often gets "hurt" and cries and needs to come in to where I am. But when I got to the patio door to let him in, it was IAN freaking out and Roger yelling something about the hospital! So after he explained to me that Ian had grabbed the dandelion popper (garden tool) from him and accidentally poked himself in the eye, I went outside into the bright light to assess the situation. He had a small cut on his eyelid, but more importantly, he had a sizable gouge out of his eyeball. Did I ever mention how as far as body parts are concerned the EYE grosses me out the most? So Roger and I tried to maintain a sense of calm as we quickly changed diapers, redressed & shoed, turned off the dinner, changed out of our "house" clothes and took the boys down to the van. Ian is usually pretty good about injuries, he doesn't dwell on them... but he was really fussing about his eye, which for us was another indication that this was more serious. I called the Peditrician after-hours nurse on the way and she had the on-call doctor call us back. All the on-call dr. said was, "Yes, I think going down to Children's is the best bet here. You're doing the right thing. Call us tomorrow and let us know what's happening." We arrived at our WONDERFULLY new Children's Hospital (and it was their 1st anniversary on the new site...and Roger and I both smiled thinking, "gee! we haven't seen the new hospital yet, so that means we haven't been down here for a whole year! that's great!") got Ian checked in, waited 2.5 hours to be seen... He has a corneal abrasion... a scratch on his eye. We pretty much already knew that. It isn't really serious unless it gets an infection, so we have antibiotic drops to give him for the next 5 days or so. He'll see his pediatrician tomorrow or Wednesday for a follow-up. We lucked out. It could've been way more serious. We definitely erred on the side of caution tonight, but Roger is partially blind in his right eye from a soccer injury when he was 8. He was pretty concerned out about Ian's eye, and we agreed that for peace of mind we should go to CHP and have it evaluated. None of us had dinner until after we left the hospital. I kinda feel bad that we didn't stop and get McDonalds or something for the boys on the way... they snacked a LOT at the hospital. Aaron basically had mum-mum crackers and root beer for dinner. So that was a fun little adventure. Not. I should also say, that in true Ian style, he was extremely well behaved and mostly laid back about the whole situation. He only cried a little when he had to get the dye test done and then flushed from his eye. It was short-lived though. (Aaron was also very well behaved.) We are very blessed in this way. Our children are able to act normally under pressure and entertain themselves quite well in medical situations.