The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Pearl is almost two, fearless, a little reckless, and has a secret recipe for energy I’m attempting to decipher and trademark. Logan and I recently reached one of those cute parenting milestones where we believe we know exactly what to do, but in a much more real way, have no idea what we’re doing, ever, at all. Last Friday at midnight, this became incredibly apparent because we were sitting in the ER waiting room, trying to pretend it was not our daughter whose faint cries were drifting down the hallway.

Pearl and I had just discovered that we could use Alexa to enhance our kitchen dance parties. She was so excited she ran for the living room, singing all the way before tripping and slamming her face into the couch. Somewhere between the trip and the slam, she bit down on her tongue so hard and deep I couldn’t look at it without erupting in tears. Why didn’t we go to the ER then? I’ll probably ask myself that question until the day I die. I think all parents have their fair share of totally unnecessary ER visits. We are well acquainted with the patient, if slightly annoyed smiles of the nurses who gently tell you, your kid is fine, it’s time to go home now. Plus the internet, the internet is stupid. Never, ever listen to the internet, I beg of you.

After a couple days we decided it might be kind of nice to see the polite smiles of the nurses and doctors, let them evaporate our fears with a hefty bill and send us happily home. But they didn’t send us home, instead, they gave us a tiny hospital gown decorated with puppies and balloons and six dissolvable stitches in Pearl’s tongue. A few hours later, when all six stitches popped out several weeks ahead of schedule, I felt the tiny screws keeping my sanity in place burst forth and ricochet into space.

And that’s how our demented story returns to an emergency room two hours away, waiting for the doctor to complete Pearl’s second round of tongue stitches in less than 12 hours. At this point, we had spent nearly 72 hours riding a carousel of guilt and regret, spinning in slow, exhausting circles of disbelief. We’d visited the ER plenty of times when we shouldn’t have and then didn’t visit the ER when we definitely should have. No big deal though, two months is enough time to get this parenting thing all squared away before the second kid arrives, right?