Being Thankful

I've been at home this week spending time with my elder daughter Maddie (aged 6) during her school vacation. During the week the routine of my wife Debbie and our younger daughter Georgia (aged 2) has continued as normal (i.e. Deb has been working and Georgia has been attending daycare).

Maddie left two days ago to spend a couple of nights with her Nanny & Pop, leaving me with some rare time to myself. I've been able to catch up on some of my interests during these child-free days and it's been great.

At 11.15 this morning I received a call from my wife. Our daycare had just called to inform her that Georgia had fallen and hit her head. Apparently Georgia had climbed a plastic fort they had in the play area, had misjudged her balance and fallen off, hitting the back of her head on the ground. The flooring in the play area is a type of AstroTurf so it's not a hard ground but when you hear news like this you fear the worst.

I had our car so I drove to the daycare to pick up Georgie. When I got there she was having lunch with the other toddlers. As soon as she saw me she got up and slowly walked over to me with her arms raised to be picked up. She didn't speak and appeared very subdued and just cuddled me tightly. There was no visible sign of any contusion or external bleeding and her pupils appeared normal. They advised me that they'd applied an ice-pack to Georgia's head for 10 minutes or so after the accident. They said that she hadn't lost consciousness at any point but had had a good cry.

On the way home I stopped by Deb's work to pick her up. At this point Georgia was dozing in her car seat in the back and didn't respond much to Mummy as she got in the car. Deb had planned to pick up Maddie from Nanny & Pop's place and then take Maddie to see Disney's High School Musical: The Ice Tour this afternoon as they had free tickets.

We arrived home and as I was taking Georgie out of her car seat she vomited all over herself and started crying. The first thing I thought of was that nausea and vomiting are symptoms of concussion. We took her upstairs, stripped her off, and gave her a bath. That seemed to calm her somewhat and after being dried she sipped some water for a while. We gave her some pain medicine and she soon appeared sleepy.

Deb had to leave at this point so I lay down on our bed with Georgia and watched her fall asleep. I watched her for about an hour or so and she was breathing fine. She ended up sleeping for 3 and a half hours and woke up thankfully none the worse for wear for her accident.



Tonight, on the local news, there was a report of a 21 month old toddler, on an excursion to a local playground with his daycare group, who somehow wandered off unnoticed. The carers found him shortly after, face down in a nearby pond. They were unable to resuscitate him. Tragically, there is one family who sent their toddler to daycare today who won't have their precious child with them tonight.

I can't begin to say how thankful I am that both of my children are sleeping soundly in their own beds this evening.