Somehow our trusty gate was not closed and our little adventurer decided to try to take the front hallway stairs by himself. Those are the stairs that are hardwood – very hard hardwood. When I ran in to see if he was okay, he was face down on the floor. He started crying almost immediately after the fall (I guess it first startled him enough that he didn’t know what happened), and when I picked him up it looked like he had a dent in his forehead. A little ice (which necessitated a fight with Jaden since he HATES having the ice pack on him…. like mother, like son with that one) and the dent went away, the bump went down, eventually the crying stopped, and he acted fine the rest of the night.

Jaden does fine going UP the stairs on his own. The problem is that he doesn’t realize yet his legs aren’t long enough to reach the next step when he tries to go DOWN the stairs. Neville had left the kitchen area where everyone was congregated to show his uncle around the house, so I’m guessing since the gate wasn’t up Jaden decided to follow his Dad. I suppose he went up a few steps, realized he wasn’t going to find his Daddy, and decided to turn around and go back into the kitchen with everyone else. 

Now, I did say everything was fine that night, but the next day I had the scare of my life. Jaden was acting fine when he woke up but then around 9:00 a.m. he started getting lethargic, which is unusual for my very active son. He kept wanting to sit in my lap and do *nothing* which is another sign that something is wrong. Then around 10:30 he fell asleep and I couldn’t wake him up easily, and when I did manage to rouse him he wanted to go right back to sleep. I called the pediatrician and they said “get him to the Children’s Hospital emergency room right away -we’ll call and let them know you are coming.”

“thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump” that’s the sound of my heart beating 10 times quicker than normal… I drove as calmly as I could to the hospital, and even managed to keep the swear words to myself when an 18-wheeler semi decided to change lanes ON TOP OF ME and I barely got out of the way by swerving into the breakdown lane. 

Now I’m really frantic…

A half hour to the hospital and insanity finding parking (there’s no ER parking in the “city”!) and then another 3 hours getting our blood pressure, weight, etc. done, then waiting, then filling out paperwork, then waiting, then seeing a nurse, then waiting, then finally seeing a doctor, and waiting again for them to discharge us. The whole time they asked us not to feed Jaden or give him anything to drink in case the doctor wanted to run certain tests. So the poor baby didn’t eat from 9:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. He was a *little* cranky by then. Neville took the afternoon off from work and met us at the hospital around 12:30 – thank goodness for that because I was a basket case by then.

After all of the waiting we find out Jaden is okay. He started acting “normal” again after the first half hour at the hospital and the doctor said if there’s anything to worry about he would have gotten progressively worse, and not shown any signs of being ‘normal’ or ‘better.’ This was good to know. Thankfully I had the wherewithal to throw some food into the diaper bag so while we waited form them to discharge us we were able to feed Jaden. They finally discharged us, and we raced home to eat.    

We learned a very good lesson. Hopefully Neville will not disappear again without letting me know. I won’t ever let my eyes off of Jaden again no matter what distractions are tugging at my attention, and anyone who leaves the gate open again is —- well I can’t think of anything that’s not too evil to print, but I’m sure I will if it happens again (yes, Neville, that includes you!)… tee hee.