Last night, at about ten thirty, I heard a big thump and a loud cry. Now, we hear a lot of thumps at my house since Jonas believes himself to be a weird hybrid between Spiderman, Peter Pan and Harry Potter, and I hear quite a few loud cries too, but this one was distinctly different. It was a cry of real pain, not kiss it make it better pain. Jonas had scaled the refrigerator (not uncommon) and completely wiped out (very uncommon). He was clutching his foot and crying harder than I’ve seen him cry in a long time.

I gently peeled off his jeans, bent, twisted and pulled his leg around to see if we had a major break. Nothing serious. I invited him to walk to the living room, and that is when I discovered that he couldn’t support his weight at all.

I called a friend to come watch sleeping Maggie, called Chris just in case he could meet us at the ER, and drove to the ER.

Thus began the wait. We sat there for two hours. Two hours in a room full of contagious people, including a kid Jonas’ age who had been puking all day, but who now seemed much better and wanted to play with my healthy, although damaged, child. Chris and I tried to keep Jonas on his chair by us, which was much easier than usual, seeing as how he couldn’t walk, but the other mother pretty much let her kid breathe all over mine, so if we start puking, I plan to UPS it to her with a thank you card.

After everyone else got to go into the ER, we got called in. We were escorted to another little room where we got to wait some more. During this time I learned that Chris knows Toy Story almost verbatim, much to Jonas’ delight. After the entire movie was recited, Jonas got his X-rays taken. It was in the technician’s back room that I saw the funniest thing I’ve seen all week (or perhaps it was only funny because it was two am and lots of stuff is funny at two am, but anyway, here goes): There were these little metal thingies shaped kind of like a butterfly bandage and roughly the size of my palm, and they were labeled, “Fig Leaf Gonad Shields”. The technician took pictures of my injured baby and all I could do was laugh about Fig Leaf Gonad Shields. (Admit it, that’s a clever name!) The technician was thankfully, amused by my being amused. Apparently, if I was having an abdominal x-ray, it would cover my ovaries and make sure I didn’t have two headed babies. I wanted very much to steal one, just so I could look at it and laugh on occasion, but I resisted the temptation.

To make along story short, we waited until three am for the one doctor on shift to assess him and find out that he had damaged cartilage, but there wasn’t a thing they could do for him except give him Motrin, which I could have done at home.

During the entire process I was really struck at how not worried I was about Jonas. It’s not that I don’t love him or want to see him hurt, it’s just that he’s been such a dare devil for so long I’ve been expecting him to break his legs so long that when he finally does hurt himself I don’t even bother to panic. I just deal with it matter-of-factly, because, with Jonas, this is just how things are.

Today, I am totally wiped out and frantically packing the family because we are traveling to North Dakota this weekend. We will be flying to Ohio tomorrow at seven am, and living in billeting until Saturday when there is a flight to Minneapolis. Once we arrive in Minnesota we will catch a Greyhound bus to Fargo. All of this is very drawn out and ridiculous, but a heck of a lot less expensive than plane tix for three and a half to Fargo. Even after bus tickets and 2 nights lodging we haven’t even approached the cost of one ticket, so this could be a good thing, provided all the flights stay the same and we don’t end up spending a week in Ohio only to fly back home. This ought to be good.

Right now I am trying to pack all four of us, which is usually easy, excpet that this time we aren’t supposed to bring more than thirty lbs per person of luggage. That’s not much, and I’m a light packer! I hope they aren’t too particular about this at the airport. All of the bags are carry on sized, like they said. I wish I had a scale. . .

Oh, thanks for all the birthday well-wishes!