Trauma

Last night the family went up to the hospital to visit my dear friend, Mandy & her new baby and family. Preston, Ava's best friend was greeted with chicken nuggets and milk- what could be better than that? Riley- Preston's new little sister is cute and Mandy is doing well. It was good to see them. I'm so happy for them. They are dear friends.

After that we went to the park. I debated sharing this part for fear of being chided in my already guilt-filled-self, but I think there's got to be something we can learn from all of this. After we had eaten dinner, the girls were playing on the playground. Ava wanted to go down the big slide, which she has done before- so Todd & I went to help her. She did great. Well, as you know anything that Ava does, Sydnee also wants to do. She is so adventurous. So she climbed up the ladder without issue, with Todd right behind her. I was at the bottom of the slide encouraging them. In retrospect, he should have gone all the way down with her, but she's been down many slides- so we weren't concerned. Sydnee, who is normally fearless became scared just as Todd let go and in her panic Sydnee grabbed the side of the slide with such force that she yanked herself off and fell from the top of the slide. It's an image I'll be haunted with for all time. Since I was at the bottom of the slide and Todd was at the top, there was no way to catch her & she fell. I won't go into many more details other than saying she was fine. She cried (and so did I) & said her chin hurt, but otherwise was picture perfect. We are counting our blessings that the playground surface was gravel & softened her fall tremendously. I don't want to even think about other scenarios. There was a mother there who saw it happen who came over to talk to us- she said she was a family practice doctor & that Sydnee handled her fall well & looked fine. We left. Lesson learned, guilt pronounced. It's often a hard call as a parent to judge the ability or non-ability of a child. Sydnee is so small, but she is also so confident in climbing that it jaded us in thinking she could handle it. So I'm reliving it a lot today, but I'm trying my best to put it under the "lesson learned" category and move on. I can say for sure that there were angels there watching after her. I saw the whole thing happen and I can't help to think that something else softened her fall. To sum it up, I'm hugging both little girls a little longer today.

Now, I've got to get some work done. Hope your day is going well...