Danger's my middle name

We pulled in from our trip to Germany around 4 pm on a Monday. As I was rushing around trying to unpack, clean up and get dinner started, I realized that I wasn't feeling too well. About 6 hours later, Henry's stomach flu caught up with me. I spent all night in and out of the bathroom and when my stomach was finally empty I fell asleep about an hour before my family woke up for the day.

Pete got the kids ready and they headed off to school. I was grateful to have some quiet time to recuperate. Unfortunately, life with little kids is rarely calm and quiet for long. Later that day the kids were outside playing and Henry decided to ride this...

...down these...

...and ended up like this.

Fortunately this is not our family's first split lip and the sight of lots of blood didn't freak me out too bad. I piled all the kids into the car and drove down the hill with Henry crying and me trying to convince him to keep the paper towel pressed onto his lip. We picked up Pete and dropped him and Henry off at the emergency room where they had a 3 hour wait ahead of them.

Out of all my kids, Henry is the one I've had to watch most carefully (which is hard to do because he is number 3). Alex was cautious and didn't attempt crazy stunts. Ruby was fearless but super coordinated. Henry is fearless and clumsy. Once the bleeding stopped and he had calmed down, Henry was right back at it. Pete took this picture of him in the waiting room. He was climbing up and under this little table as if nothing had happened.

He ended up getting 3 stitches and luckily his two front teeth seem to be OK, although they might have shifted just a touch. His lip was pretty swollen and he had a hard time eating for the first 24 hours. Alex tried to cheer him up by telling him that now he would have a scar on his lip just like Alex and Daddy.

Luckily kids heal really fast and 5 days later Pete took the stitches out and he was good as new. In fact he doesn't really have a scar at all...which according to Alex is "No fair!"