I was going to have a post today of pictures from our local holiday parade. Nothing fantastic, but some cute small town Connecticut stuff.

Instead, let me tell you about how I fainted Monday morning and landed directly on my face-parts. BAM. Left eye, nose, forehead, I’d like you to meet floor. Then I spent the day on the couch feeling sorry for myself and putting frozen peas on my swollen eye instead of editing photos (or writing the other two giveaway posts I have coming up).

I have no idea why I fainted, although this isn’t the first time I’ve lost consciousness sort of randomly. I can name maybe 6 or 7 times in my life it’s happened, dating back to 4th or 5th grade. It’s usually right after I hurt myself, although “hurt myself” can mean anything from slamming my finger in the door to having outpatient surgery on my, uh, delicate areas. Yesterday morning I had a really sharp – being stabbed with a knife sharp – pain in my stomach for a split second right before I fell over. I don’t even remember the falling part, just waking up slowly and realizing something was wrong, mostly because my face really hurt and I wasn’t wearing pants.

Evan had come in either right as I fell or right after and he was pretty freaked out, as I expect any kid would be if their mom was unresponsive. The adrenaline rush from passing out combined with the pain of my face smash combined with thinking about how much worse it could have been if I hit my head on something harder or pointier resulted in a few minutes of sobbing, but I pulled myself together enough to get everyone downstairs, fed, and safely watching cartoons (even if Caroline never made it out of her pajamas).

E (unfortunately) had to go into work for a while but (fortunately) made it home for dinner, bedtime, and to nag me about going to the ER to get checked out. My face felt worse and worse so eventually I gave in just to make sure I hadn’t fractured my eye socket or driven a piece of bone into my brain or some other horrible, terrifying medical condition I found thanks to Dr. Google. Four hours later I know I am 100% healthy, apart from the sore face and a lot of embarrassment. I am also DEFINITELY not pregnant. I’m supposed to drink more water and “take it easy” but since my discharge papers didn’t come with a babysitter OR a housekeeper I can only take it sort of easy.

If you see me in the next couple of days, try to refrain from cringing in horror at my face, at least any more than usual. It’s pretty bad and hurts too much to cover with anything besides a pair of big sunglasses. I’m just happy we took our Christmas card pictures LAST week.

p.s. Confidential to my friend Megan: I’m sorry I bailed on our plans and told you I was “sick”. I was still too embarrassed to explain the face thing at  8 am. I hope you understand.

p.p.s. Today is the LAST DAY to enter to win the Tollytots prize package, so if you haven’t checked it out yet GO! NOW!

I think all vacations should automatically come with one at-home recovery day, where no one is expected to do anything but the bare minimum of feeding/clothing themselves/dependents and lying on the couch checking email is a perfectly good way to spend 6 hours. Unfortunately, despite making wise choices before we went away for the weekend (all the dishes were clean! all the laundry was put away! the toilet bowls were scrubbed!) I’m already behind on my to-do list for the week so I’m wearing my running shoes and blast through these dirty clothes and floors while the kids fall asleep sitting up watching Disney Jr. Caroline begged for a nap starting at 11 am and has been asleep for 3 hours already. I’m going to throw dinner at them at 6 and then crash for the night by 8. (I feel even worse for my husband, who has duty today into tomorrow and gets ZERO couch-sitting-email-checking time – at least at home I don’t have to wear real pants.)

We had a great weekend at Sesame Place. The ratio of 4 grown ups to 2 kids is MUCH more relaxing that the other way around. Caroline realized Elmo probably wasn’t going to try to eat her and loved every character, every show and every ride. The weather was glorious – 60 on Saturday and close to 70 on Sunday.

But, oh guys, it was so so so so SO crowded. I wasn’t prepared for quite so many people. Large groups of people suck, since statistically speaking you are bound to run into more Jerky McJerkfaces the bigger the group gets. It’s science: Out of 20 people, maybe 1 is the kind of self-entitled a-hole who thinks cutting in line in front of preschoolers is cool. So if you have 40 people, 2 of them are a-holes. In a super crowded amusement park where everyone is tired and wrangling toddlers and there is absolutely no beer, that number soars to approximately 17 bazillionteen. The park wasn’t prepared for that many people – let alone that many jerks – so by the end of Sunday we were glad all the “fun stuff” (tm Evan) was over and we could go home where there were no lines to ride the King Sized Magical Bed To Sleepytimes.

Although on the way out I added Christmas to our season passes so obviously it wasn’t TOO traumatic of an experience. Maybe I’ll knit us all matching wool hats and we’ll plan to go when it’s freezing and miserable so we won’t have to wait in so many lines.

Caroline’s reaction to the line at the spinning teacups

It’s been a week since Caroline’s accident and she has almost entirely forgotten about it. She doesn’t even request baby Motrin anymore because she’s too busy trying to injure herself further. It’s actually been nice for me to have somewhere to direct my neuroses – if there was NOTHING I could do for her I would drive myself insane reliving the fall. But now I’m so busy chasing her down and trying to distract her with quiet activities and making sure she isn’t using her left arm too much that I don’t have time to sit and dwell.

Do you realize how many times a day we take our eyes off our children? A zillion. Trying to narrow that down to zero is impossible, unless you never sleep or blink. There are so many moments you need to look at something else – the road, the food on the hot stove, your other child, the inside of your eyelids – that there a hundred opportunities a day for them to hurt themselves no matter how carefully you watch. Hyper-vigilance doesn’t prevent them from rolling off their bed during nap time or choking on a bite of food or accidentally pushing their sister off the playscape.

From that very first positive pregnancy test we do what we can to protect our babies. We give up our vices and our lunch meat in the name of avoiding hidden dangers and unseen poisons. We educate ourselves on birth and chemicals and nutrition and “baby-proof” our homes. But babies can’t themselves be baby-proofed. There are things, seen and unseen, that can hurt our children or might hurt our children or could potentially maybe hurt our children. Film at 11. And no matter how careful you are there’s no guarantee a meteor won’t fall out of the sky and crush your house tomorrow.

I can’t undo what happened, but I can learn my lesson. My phone is no longer surgically attached to my hand. I’ve missed a lot of blog posts and tweets and no, I didn’t see your kid’s karate belt ceremony pictures on Facebook. But Caroline and I have talked and cuddled and laughed more than ever before. I am holding her with my eyes and my heart but not holding her back even though I want to wrap her in bubble wrap and lock her in a padded castle. In the last week she learned the phrase “I DO IT” and although my heart leaps into my throat when she won’t hold my hand I so admire her determination to be independent even in the face of a broken bone. She is brave. Children are brave. We are brave for bringing them into this big scary world and brave for letting them go.

There’s a post I’ve almost finished in my drafts folder right now that I was going to put up today. It’s long and a little rambling, but basically boils down to “Check me out, I am an awesome mom!”

I will not be posting it.

On Friday, I took the kids to the playground for a playdate with one of Evan’s best friends. We had the same playdate exactly a week earlier, at which Caroline fell off a step and bumped her head. She had a little mark but was fine within seconds, although she told me about her “pay-ound bump” at least 10 times a day.

That is what we call “foreshadowing”. I also call it “Suzanne is too stupid to learn a lesson the universe tried to teach her and her baby pays the price.”

At the playground, Caroline decided she wanted to play with the boys instead of swing. I was glad for the chance to just sit and talk to my friends while the kids ran around. It’s not a huge playground and there were only two other parents there. I laughed when one of the other dads volunteered to help Caroline climb up to the slide – she turned her back on him and said “NO!” as she scrambled up herself. Hahahaha my silly daughter, so independent! I love that I can let her do her own thing! Look at me over here, chatting and checking Facebook!

I’m not exactly sure what happened next. My friend Cheri had walked over to check on the kids and I was replying to a message on my phone when I heard her say “Evan you can’t push Caroline!” I started to get up, snapping “Evan! Don’t push your sister!” like I do at least hundred times a week when I saw Caroline fall backwards off the very top of the 6 foot tall playscape.

WHOOSH. WHOMP. SCREAM.

She fell flat on her back, or as flat as you can fall when you head is half your body weight. My world divided into two at that moment – my physical actions and things I said out loud versus my racing thoughts and worries and the part of my brain that was so terrified it froze in one long high pitched buzz.

In my head it registered that it was good news that she was crying – it meant she was conscious and breathing.  One of us picked her up, but I can’t remember if Cheri grabbed her and handed her to me or if I sprinted from my picnic table fast enough to scoop her up myself. I stripped off her dress to check for obvious bruises or bleeding or anywhere a bone might be sticking through her skin. No bones, no blood. She was crying pretty badly, but I couldn’t tell if it was a scared cry or a pain cry.

Then my brave, independent girl pushed me away and tried to climb back up to take her turn on the slide. She only made it one step before she started crying even harder, grabbing the front of her throat and saying “neck neck neck!” over and over. My brain started buzzing louder, shouting at me that I never should have picked her up at all and who knows what kind of damage I could have caused to her neck or spine. My body held her gently and walked back to the picnic table to grab my bag so we could go to the hospital. I calmly ordered Evan off the playground and into his car seat. He was not happy about leaving. Thank God Cheri knows my kids well enough to be totally comfortable wrestling the screaming 3 year old into the car while she explained to him that pushing Caroline was naughty and she was hurt so we had to go to the hospital. He was pretty upset and by the time we reached the ER both kids were tear-soaked, not to mention filthy from the playground. I think the second luckiest part of the day was that no one called CPS on me. (In fact, the entire staff was nothing but kind and sympathetic and ready to do anything to help us.)

The luckiest part of the day is that after two CAT scans and a chest X-ray, the pediatric emergency doctor cleared Caroline of a concussion, head injury, or spinal injury. Her lungs are fine, her brain is fine, her speech is still clear. Her collar bone, on the other hand, is not. She broke it on the left side, a clear break on the chest X-ray although from the outside all she has is a tiny bit of swelling.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything they can do for a 20 month old with a broken collar bone. For the next 4 to 6 weeks her little body is going to spend all its extra energy healing the break and I’m supposed to keep her still and quiet. She is only allowed Motrin or Tylenol for the pain (and all the popsicles she wants).

In the meantime, I get to spend every day of the next 4-6 weeks (and probably the next 40-60 years) thinking about what a crappy mother I am. I let this happen. If I had been right there next to her I could have grabbed her arm. I could have caught her. I could have stopped Evan from pushing before anyone got hurt. Yes, it was an accident, but a more cautious, careful, attentive mother would have stopped it. My “let them do their own thing!” approach means my baby is literally broken. I can’t stop thinking about how lucky I am that she wasn’t injured more seriously – if she’d fallen at just a slightly different angle the results could have been tragic.

I appreciate people trying to make me feel better, but I don’t think I actually deserve to feel better. She could have fallen, even if I was right there. Maybe trying to catch her would have made it worse. But the combination of being distracted by my phone and her breaking a bone is the kind of thing that gets written in newspaper stories filled with words like “negligent”, “unfit”, “irresponsible” and “failure”. I now have definitive proof I’ve been doing this mothering thing wrong, and it’s an X-ray of my tiny little girl’s broken part. My own parts feel almost as broken.

I wasn’t paying enough attention and Caroline got hurt. The end.

I decided Caroline should be Tinkerbell for Halloween because, hello, the child practically IS a magical pixie.

Shut up.

And in typical Suzanne-fashion I also decided I should MAKE her a Tinkerbell costume. Because this one with the light up wings from the Disney store is too gaudy (it’s not) and this one in the baby-size isn’t pretty enough (it is) and this one is too yellow and the wings on this one aren’t cute enough and GOSH, if I’m going to end up spending $30 on a costume I might as well just sew it myself! That will be cheaper, easier AND cuter! I’ll just check Pinterest for a pattern.

Go ahead and punch me in the face now, since anyone with half a brain can tell you “I’ll just do that thing I saw on Pinterest” NEVER ENDS WELL.

I started with this pattern from Make It Love It and…improvised. I might rock a party or a bake sale or a set of knitting needles but I am TERRIFIED of my sewing machine. Luckily, I’ve never let being terrible at something stop me from trying again. I’m slightly oblivious and stupid that way.

So instead of writing the blog post I was planning to write yesterday or working on the sponsored post I have due Wednesday or making a healthy family dinner for my kids or doing the breakfast dishes or any of the other things that actually need to get done I dragged Evan and Caroline to the craft store where I spent $65 on supplies and then wasted 4 hours attempting to sewing a green leotard I probably could have ordered from China for $12.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I spent like $40 on fabric (it was on sale!) and $15 on the CUTEST Tinkerbell-green wings and headband and wand they were selling in the pre-made costume section and another $10 on random craft supplies because that’s what happens when you go to Joann’s with a bunch of coupons.

The good news is Caroline is SUPER excited about her costume. I had her try on Attempt #2 and she refused to take it off. After I put the kids to bed I got Attempt #3 sewed and hemmed (note to self: YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT SEWING. Next time pick something easier to work with that lycra) and the ruffled sleeves done. Then my machine started jamming and I almost went blind with rage so I’m giving myself a break before I attempt the 3 layer petal skirt. Maybe I’ll make the sparkly green tutu tonight (at least I know the tutu doesn’t involve any sewing!!) and try the skirt again tomorrow.

Second-worst case scenario is I throw the whole mess in a box and mail it to my mom to fix. Truly worst-case scenario is I throw the whole thing in the trash and just order that dress from the Disney Store. Although those shoes are super cute.

————————————UPDATE————————————

BOOM.