Crisis Management 084 (mommy style)

"You really need to work on your crisis management," says my husband as he walks in to the living room to stomp out the flames that I left behind, hollering "help! honey, help!"

True, true, I didn't handle that one very well. In fact, when the big stuff happens, I don' t handle it very well.

Shortly after we moved into this house, we had a terrible accident. One I don't care to recount. It was a life threatening fall one of my kiddos took, and I had NO presence of mind, what to do? Go to the ER? Call the dr? Was he fine?

You'd think after some 7 years as a lifeguard (I've revived more "Annie's" than I care to recount) I'd have a handle on emergencies. Nope. You see, these are MY children, not a plastic Annie doll that has no arms or legs.

So back to that story, I ended up phoning my husband asking him what to do. We drove to the ER, Little Critter was amazingly okay, I credit God and amazing angels for guiding his fall that day.

Last year, Sweet Pea pulled our bar stool over by mistake, it smashed, and I mean squish-smashed-beyond-recognition his biggest tiny toe. His toe split, nearly in half, in about 5 places. It was, we learned later, also broken. It was horrendous....blood everywhere, even on the walls. Again, I'd no idea what to do. I could only restrain Sweet Pea and keep him from further injuring his toe, couldn't figure out how to get him to the ER. I hollered at Joe to get the phone for me , then my sweet friend, Christin came to the rescue and drove us all to the ER. As soon as I got to the ER the triage nurse wrapped Pea's foot right up to keep that toe from falling off. I hadn't the presence of mind (or experience) to do that at home. Then they loaded him up with Benedryl. That helped immensely, as the dr had give him a hundred locals in order to stitch his toe back together. It was terrible. Now Sweet Pea's toe is healed and has some scarring to show the trauma.

I am a mother of three boys, so far be it from me to tell them to "get down from there" any more than I have to. I LIKE for these boys to climb, jump, run, swing, hang...so long as they aren't damaging the house. I let them do most anything they feel they can do. When they fall at the playground or on a hike, it's no surprise to me and I run to them and wrap them in all the comfort & kisses I can offer. It's the unexpected.

That time you don't think that anything bad could possibly happen- aren't even thinking about it. I do that uuuuuhh-- thing. The suck-your-breath-in noise, that backward sigh. You know, the mom thing. My mom did it,I'm not far behind.

I do it. Kiddo falls down while running down the street.... uuuuuuhh---. Of course, I'm just feeling the pain and adrenaline all at once. It's the mom thing, I think we're supposed to do it. This IS my crisis management. My body kicks it into help-my-son mode and I go to work. I just need a second.

That's why I run around the kitchen after the matches fell on the floor and my carpet is going up in flames hollering "Help! Honey! Help!" I just need a second....

PS~ A new beautiful lush red rug will cover up the burn marks, I'm sure. ;)