There is no good excuse for the blunder I made today! Eden and I had just finished running off to the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner. We hopped in the car and then got on the road back home. There is an intersection that I had to take a u-turn at to get to the freeway entrance. I waited for the all clear and then zipped around. I heard a CLUNK and thought the groceries must have been sent flying–I looked in my rear view with the impossible thought that it would have been Eden. I didn’t see anything and continued to merge into the lane I needed to enter the freeway. I heard a loud cry, looked over my shoulder this time and saw Eden’s carseat face down on the other side of the back seat. It turns out I buckled Eden into her carseat but forgot that the seat wasn’t secured in it’s base like normal (the base is in the other car today) so I forgot to strap the seat belt over her. What had I done!!! I pulled over (in a not so safe place–but I couldn’t leave her face down and screaming!) I jumped in the back seat, pulled her out of her carseat and held her, loved her and hoped and prayed she was alright! She is fine. She wasn’t super thrilled that I put her back in the seat to get us home, but so far as I can tell I am more traumatized than she is! Good grief!

… Chad and Elisa! Yaaayyy! Thank you, Furniture Row, for the $1000 sweepstakes. You picked the right winners. When Chad phoned me and told me I was so flustered that I said, “You’re kidding us!” My own “isms” make me laugh.

It seems like we have been contributing WAY more to the economy than I wish we were. It seems like we are shelling out a large sum of cash every other week (or day). BTW, we bought a Camry last week. We had been looking for ages. With all the out-go and now living in a pretty affluent ward I have become a little money obsessed. I keep saying things to people about money or lack of it, and then thinking, “What are you saying stupid!” I am not really money obsessed, in general, but lately I feel like there is a price tag attached to everything, and it is more than I want to spend.

I wouldn’t really fret about our blog’s title if the falling down the stairs incident hadn’t been followed two days later by a disaster.

Eden has been a little whiny with all her little teeth cutting. So when I heard her I’m-hurt-cry, I didn’t think too much of it. Nevertheless I hopped up from by seat and went to comfort her. She had been crawling around my parents’ front room and had hunkered down to play under the kitchen table, right behind me. When I turned around I was not prepared for what I saw. Eden had two one-inch fishing hooks, attached to about a foot of fishing line in her hand. She was pulling on the fishing line in pain. One of the hooks was pierced completely through deep on her bottom lip.

I grabbed her and disabled her hands so she wouldn’t make it worse. I turned to my dad who was right there working on dinner, and cried “Dad, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” He called for my mom, who was in the next room. Daniel came in too. We were all shocked and horrified at what we saw.

Dad started to try and clip off the barb with pliers. Daniel thought he was trying to pull it out the “wrong” way. Daniel took over and cut off the string end. He tried to get the hook out but the pliers were too big to work in her little mouth. Eden was screaming, I was crying. She kept pushing her tongue up against the inside of her mouth where the hook was. While someone went and grabbed some smaller pliers, I moved around to have Eden sitting in my lap with one arm hugging her arms down and the other arm covering her eyes and bracing her little head.

All the crying and saliva made the bleeding look worse. Daniel said, “Don’t look, Elisa!” He tried a couple times and was finally able to pull the barb through. He had been faced with something similar when he was life guarding. He was amazing. I knew there was a right way to get a hook out but I didn’t know how to do it. Too bad it involves causing more pain and making the hole bigger.

There was next to no bleeding after the hook was out. Eden has a little spot on her lip down by her chin. It could have been SO much worse! (Which my dad and brother started talking about afterward–it makes me sick to think about.) We were all pretty shaken up, but poor Eden was just traumatized. I just pulled her close and cried with her. After a few minutes my mom grabbed one of Eden’s new noisy toys. Eden got a hold of it and totally calmed down. She was completely distracted. It hasn’t bothered her at all since.

All we can think of is that my mom’s big fuzzy dog, Sheba, must have gotten the hook in her fur in the garage and brought it in. Eden must have seen it, put it in her mouth and when she realized it was sharp tried to pull it out with the fishing line, piercing it through. I still cannot believe what I saw.