Our 4th

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post this or not, but I have finally decided I will. I'm to a place where I can think about it without my palms sweating. And the purpose of the blog was to be honest about adopting and parenting. So this post is for all of you good parents who have an off day here and there on occasion. Some will read these words and be horrified, others will read it and think “whew, at least I’m not that bad.” As a preface – Jay and I do watch our kids very closely. But things just seem to keep happening to Camryn that never happened to Cade…..But like Jay said Wednesday could’ve been a bad day – but really it wasn’t because everyone went to bed that night in one piece.


Jay and I were parental failures on Wednesday. It started when we decided to go to Springfield for lunch and a Sam’s trip. Cade put Camryn in the car and told me he couldn’t get her fastened. I told him I’d do it in a minute. Then Jay couldn’t find his dang Johnny Spencer hat (which that hat could be a post on it’s own, Johnny only had a few made advertising his bid for public office and he trusted Jay enough to give him one but I keep crushing the hat by accident.  Wednesday I found it under a basket in our storage cabinet in the laundry room) so I had to search for it for him. Then we had to switch out some laundry and grab the diaper bag, etc. You probably know where I’m going with this….we were about 20 miles down the road, on I-44, when Cade yells “Camryn’s not hooked up”. I thought I handled it pretty well. My first instinct was to screech the brakes and whip the car over on the side of the interstate, but I saw the next exit was 1 mile away. Instead I calmly took that exit and came to a slow easy stop and got her hooked up. I drove off thanking God that we had not been in an accident prior to us realizing she was not fastened.

We ate lunch and made another stop with out incident. Then we went to Sam’s. Everything was going fine until we were ready to checkout. I remembered we needed milk. I told them to wait and I’d be right back. My parting words to Jay were “keep your hands on Camryn”. As I’m walking back with the milk I heard Camryn crying and I knew something had happened. As I turned down the aisle and saw three shoppers with their hands over their mouths I knew she had fallen out of the cart. Jay was holding her and he looked terrible. He turned his head for a half second and Camryn plopped out of the cart onto the concrete. Thankfully there were no broken bones and no blood. I gave her a bottle and she appeared to be fine. Jay quickly returned all of our cold items so we could checkout and head to Urgent Care. We wanted to have her head checked to make sure she didn’t have a skull fracture or concussion since she had a goose egg growing out of the side of her head.

While Jay was putting the stuff up and checking out (we opened up one of the gallons of milk so she could take a bottle so we had to pay for it) I took the kids to the car. Cade was in panic mode. I was trying hard to squelch my panic, but he has making it worse. I think he asked me 20 times if she was going to go blind. I’ve pondered off and on about why Cade picked blindness as the ailment he focused on. Finally today it came to me. Recently we were watching Little House on the Prairie and he asked me why Mary was blind. Since I’m such a TV nerd I told him about how hers was nerve damage but her husband Adam’s was from a trauma. I told him about how on another episode Adam hit his head again and regained his eyesight. Mystery solved.

We got to Urgent Care and ended up not having to wait very long. Camryn was her normal self – talking, walking, smiling, no ill-feelings towards her parents. Jay and I were a little worse for the wear, but at least Camryn was good. Cade was still pretty upset, which meant he was talking. A lot.  Which made Jay and I even more tired.

We got back in the room and the nurse came in to find out what had happened and get Camryn’s health history. I was so exhausted from the fall and Cade asking me if she was going to go blind that I had a hard time thinking. The nurse asked me if there was any significant health history. I was so mentally slow it took me a moment to sort our what the nurse might need to know and what she didn’t necessarily need to know….like she is adopted (no), she has had nursemaid elbow twice (no), she fell in the bathtub once (no), etc. Since it was taking me awhile to go through the mental checklist Cade decided to put in his two cents. He said “well she did eat a Cascade Action Pack last week”. Jay stared daggers at Cade. Thank you Cade for making us sound even worse than we already felt. Yes, one day last week she took a bite out of one of those action packs before Jay could get her stopped. She then proceeded to vomit up the entire contents of her stomach. Just FYI- kids eat those things all the time and it is ok per Poison Control. After the nurse left we sent Cade back out to the waiting room. We didn’t need any more of his “help” while we were there.

The doctor looked her over and said she didn’t see anything that was concerning –which is what we thought to, but it helps to have a professionals opinion. They sent us home with a list of things to watch for and she hasn’t had any of the symptoms on the printout. Again, we were thanking God that He kept her safe.

Lyle and Jania had invited us over that evening and we still went because we decided we wanted more adults to help us watch her. Cade and Ty were outside shooting off minor fireworks. Cade came in and said something had hit him in the face. I think a piece of something broke off and hit him. Thank goodness it wasn’t a few inches higher or we would’ve been going back to the ER that evening. Cade wisely decided he was done with fireworks without us telling him it was time to quit. What a day.

For those keeping track since December we’ve had

2 ER Visits

2 Urgent Care Visits and

2 Poison Control calls

It is a good thing I color my hair or otherwise I think it would be all gray. I’m not sure if Camryn is more active than Cade or if it’s because Jay and I are 9 years slower with her, but she is certainly a handful. I jokingly told Jay that the reason why we ended up with Camryn was because God knew she needed parents with a good insurance plan!!