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Today was your third birthday. You had a party with some friends, some family, some cake, and some fun.

And I could go on and on about how much you have changed since you came home, but it would be gushy and sentimental.

Instead, I will tell you my best story from today.

As you were getting ready for bed this evening, you took a quick bath.

You really needed one, to since you had managed to spill a variety of things on yourself in the course of the day. You actually pleaded with me that you needed to wash yourself off, and your legs were sticky enough to warrant a small dunking.

So I ran the water, you got in, we did a quick bath, and then you got out. Quick and easy, no distractions.

And then I said “Ok, let me get you your towel!”

And you said “Why?”

And I said “Because you are all wet!”

To which you responded “I not all wet!”

You do this quite a bit, this stubborn for the sake of stubborn. It isn’t really exasperating because you do it good-naturedly, but it can definitely put the brakes on any momentum we have generated. So I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing really sprang to mind. Fortunately, you rescued me.

You looked down at yourself with a critical eye and then looked back to me and said “Wait. Yes I am!” with a big grin on your face.

And that is how much you have changed in three years.

Today you got the first four stitches of your life. You got them shortly after you got your first profusely bloody wound.

It is on your chin. I wish I could say that I know how you did it, but I really don’t I know you fell over while you were running down the concrete ramp outside of your school. I know you lost a shoe, and I know you ended up sitting on your butt, crying.

You did not get any other scraps or cuts. You did not hit your head.

One of your teachers was standing next to me and we were both looking in your direction, but you ducked out of sight for an instant and reappeared tumbled over with a sad look on your face.

You just cut yourself underneath your chin, which bled tremendously. Before I got to you, you had blood splatter on the floor and your shirt. I tried to get to you as quickly as I could and I don’t think more than 10 seconds passed, but by the time I got there you had substantial amounts of blood running down your neck onto your shirt.

You started crying and clung to me, but that was primarily because there was a sudden interest in what had happened to you from everyone around.

Now, the advantage to sustaining a bloody and painful looking wound outside of a daycare is that the staff goes crazy and starts to try to patch you up immediately. I scooped you up and grabbed your stuff and we headed inside where you were cared for by no less than six women who all love you and adore you and were only slightly unprepared. They had you and I both cleaned up relatively shortly, with you in a new outfit, the bleeding stemmed and a grape Popsicle clutched in your hand.

You would not have received better care anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the speed at which you received the care meant that I did not have the time to take a picture of you. I also felt that it might be slightly inappropriate seeing as you actually did require medical attention.

So, for the second time in a week you and I were at the hospital. I find it funny that we appeared in the emergency room in considerably better shape than when we arrived at your last doctor’s appointment. We certainly smelled better.

Plus, a Popsicle and your bunny supply a good amount of fortitude and I was able to take a picture or two while we waited at the emergency room.


The nice part of the evening for your dad was the short wait we had at the emergency room, caused primarily because you needed to go potty. It was the emptiest emergency waiting room I have ever seen, which filled me with relief. It was so empty that we had checked in and were consulting with the doctor before your mom arrived.

You were happy to see your mom, and you were incredibly good. You did cry at times, and you were both sad and scared at times.

But you were also tremendously brave. And you even had some time for some smiles.


So in the end you got four stitches, six stickers, a big syringe to use as a squirt gun, an arm bracelet, an arm bracelet for bunny and a cool show-and-tell for school tomorrow.

You aren’t exactly proud of your stitches yet, and you did get teary eyed and said “This is not good!” while looking at them in the mirror, but you were able to smile when you let me take a picture of them.

You are sick today. You woke up fine, were happy to go to school, and you sat down to eat breakfast without any indication that anything was wrong.

Two hours later you had a fever of 103.5 degrees and had vomited once.

We decided you should see a doctor.

And this is where the day became fun.

The only appointment the doctor had was at 11:00 o’clock. I picked you up at 10:30. We had a half an hour drive to get there, and we needed gas.

And then, as we entered the highway, we got stuck behind the largest motor-home I have seen in a while, towing a trailer.

And, still stuck behind the motor-home, I found that the three lane highway was closed down to one lane to be repaved.

Needless to say, we were late to the doctor’s office.

This is never good. We (you and I) once spent an hour sitting in the waiting room after arriving 15 minutes late to an appointment under nearly identical circumstances. That time you were quiet and well behaved, but mostly because you felt pretty good. Today you seemed to be mostly unconscious and I did not relish sitting anywhere for a prolonged period of time with you seeming so ill. Especially without being able to give you any Motrin to bring your fever down.

The hospital staff are nice, but firm and generally embittered disconnected. During our last wait they let me know that they had given away our spot about 40 minutes after we arrived, shortly after the point that I had reached that conclusion on my own. About ten minutes after that they suggested that if we were in a hurry we could go to urgent care, even though there was nothing about our demeanor or activities that would have indicated anything like “hurry”. I declined, mostly because we had time, you weren’t that sick, and I am stubborn.

So I got in line to check in. This is another long delay, since everyone with an appointment has to check in at the front desk. Today the line was relatively short, though, and we only stood there for five minutes.

We didn’t actually move in that five minutes, though. We left the line abruptly after you threw up on yourself, on me and on your bunny. We fled the line for a bathroom.

Now, the only bathroom I know the location of is the bathroom in pediatrics. This led to you and I floating through the waiting room, covered in vomit, eliciting looks of extreme concern from the parents who arrived early, or even on time, to their appointments. The children they had brought were unconcerned and continued to play together with the communal toys in an effort to create some kind of super bug.

The front desk staff ignored us as we plunged through the spacious, though closed air, environment.

We cleaned up in the bathroom. Your bunny was a trooper and had fielded most of it. She was wrapped in your coat, which had also received a dousing, and quarantined. You and I got the chunks rubbed off and a small going over with damp paper towels.

I’m sure we looked better than we smelled.

At this point I was done with the check-in line. We left the bathroom and approached the front counter for the pediatricians office, sidling up to the side that is usually reserved for making appointments rather than checking in. I expected to have to go over to urgent care since we were 20 minutes late, not checked in, and covered in vomit.

The three ladies behind the counter were in deep conversation over a website on the monitor. It had a picture of a half naked man on it.

The other parents in the waiting room peered at us with some concern.

The conversation behind the counter indicated this was not the first picture the ladies had looked at in the last few minutes.

I stood and waited. You put your head down on my shoulder. Bunny quietly polluted the air from inside your coat.

There was a discussion about some anatomy. It wasn’t really from a nursing perspective.

They noticed us about the time one of the ladies stated a preference against tattoos.

They looked a little startled.

I said “We have an 11:00 o’clock appointment, we are late and we did not check in. Is there anyway we can see the doctor or should we head over to urgent care?”

And the response came rather quickly “I think we can get you in.”

You recently changed classrooms again, which is a traumatic experience. It has taken you a little time to adjust, but you are doing pretty well.

We have noticed, again, a few changes in your language. Apart from the obvious movement toward more complex sentences, usually representing more complex thoughts, we are seeing new words and phrases introduced into your repertoire. And, of course, the phrases are usually vernacular and therefore extremely funny.

For example, yesterday we were trying to leave the house to go play with your friend D. You and your mother had gone out to the car while I was talking on the phone, but you had returning to the house to get your sunglasses.

Having procured your sunglasses, you, in the spirit of your age, insisted on opening the large heavy door to the garage yourself. You could not turn the door knob with sufficient strength, however, and I (having some urgency to leave and exhausted much of my patience arguing with you that you could not open the door) turned the door knob for you and pulled the door open.

Your mother appeared at the end of the car just in time to see you turn around, firmly place your hand on my leg as if to hold me as far out of your personal space as you could and yell:

“Daddy, you’re freaking me out!”

Your mother burst out laughing, as I stood there dumbly with no response and you walked around to get in the car.

But for an only child it can be kind of bitter sweet.