Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Poor Alex. He had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Well, parts of it anyway. Despite that, he's been pretty happy and as energetic as ever.

It started this morning after we dropped Ben off at school for his field trip. We left the school building and went across the street to get in the van. Alex was running ahead of us as usual. He tripped and fell, scraping both knees. It looked like his shoes had suddenly been stapled to the ground. His feet stopped, but the rest of him just kept going. He cried the whole way home. Drama queen? Not Alex.

At home later, he fell off the side of the couch when he was trying to climb over it. He came to complain to me just so he could get a hug, then went back to playing.

The next incident happened when we went to the bus stop to pick Ben up after school. Alex didn't want to wear his shoes, so he rode in the wagon with Chris and Daniel. Just as we were about to stop to wait for the bus, Alex fell out of the wagon backwards and landed on his head. Surprisingly, he didn't cry that time.

Then came the big one. Kyle came over to play late this afternoon and Ben, Chris, and Kyle all went out back to play. Alex waited a while, then finally got on his shoes so he could go out and play with them. While he was doing that, I took Daniel up for his bath. I heard Bryce downstairs saying, "Alex, are you okay?" Then I heard some, "It's okay, we'll clean it off. Blood won't hurt you." After I had drained the water in the bath, Bryce called me to come down, where he showed me the top and back of Alex's head. He had a nice gash where Kyle had hit him with a long two by four we have in the back yard. I took Daniel back upstairs and put him in bed, then took Alex over to the Quick Care.



We got out of the van at the Quick Care and had parked next to an island thing. Alex insisted on walking on the curb there, despite me saying that he'd had a rough day and that maybe he should just walk on the ground. Yep, he fell into the bushes. "That one didn't hurt, Mom." At least there was that. Of course, when we walked into the Quick Care, they told us they were closed even though they were supposed to be open for another hour. Their computers had gone down 2 hours earlier and still hadn't come back. So when they couldn't verify who people were, they couldn't treat them. They told me that the other Quick Care on 12th Avenue was also closed for the same reason. So I took Alex to Primary Health (it's also like a Quick Care) despite being fairly certain that they aren't on our preferred provider list with insurance. That means insurance will only cover 60% of the cost, but I thought it would be better than driving in to Meridian to go to the ER.

When we walked up to the receptionist, Alex told her that he didn't need any shots. She told him to make sure he told the doctor that. Then the doctor came out and had a quick look at Alex's head and said that they just had to clean the room, then we'd be able to go back. Another kid was just leaving who had to have stitches in his chin. Lucky Alex was going to get 2 or 3 staples in his head. He was actually pretty brave for the whole thing, even when he saw the doctor filling up the needle to numb his head. It looked like it was hurting him to numb it, but he didn't cry, just kind of whimpered and ducked his head down a little tiny bit. After they numbed him, he did get 3 staples. He didn't mind so much when he got to choose whether to go to Cold Stone or McDonald's for a treat after. He chose McDonald's and is very excited about his Spped Racer toy.

(These are kind of hard to see, but if you look close, you might see the 3 staples ... or you can click on the picture to see a bigger version)



Let's just hope that tomorrow is better for him.