If you are second in your family’s birth order, this placement may be hazardous to your health. For example, your older sibling may want to use your head as a surface to prop up her chin.
Or, your parents may momentarily forget that you exist, which could lead to all sorts of trouble. Case in point: On an afternoon not too long ago, our entire family was hanging out in Dave’s and my upstairs bedroom. Since our house is a one-and-a-half story, the upstairs is one giant room with quite a bit of space to run. While Dave, Cecilia and I were lounging on the bed, Ellen was doing just that: running as fast as she could, back and forth between the bed and the top of the stairs. Dave and I were cheering her on, and she was absolutely loving it until she stopped in her tracks, coughed loudly, gagged and threw up on the carpet.
Dave and I immediately hopped off the bed and ran over to her, first because we know how traumatizing it is to throw up when you’re three, and second because we could tell from her glassy-eyed stare and slack jaw that there was more where that came from. So, she continued into one of Dave’s dirty shirts (which was conveniently lying in the middle of the floor, per usual) while Dave held it for her, and I rubbed her back saying, “it’s okay, you’ll be okay” while Addie curiously sniffed the wretched results of the first gag onto the carpet.
As all this was going down, there suddenly sounded a loud thump from behind us. “Oh shit – she fell off the bed!” I declared while abandoning my post by the Puker and running to the other thing that was “going down” – namely, our dear second daughter.
Fortunately, C started screaming right away (a sound much more appreciated than silence in this situation), and it all ended well. As a matter of fact, by the time I scooped C up and wiped her tears, Ellen was saying “I frowed up a little bit. Why did that happen? Can you tell me why that happened?” and Dave was already on his way back up the stairs with a wet rag and the bottle of Resolve. He said to me with a smirk, “it’s a good thing my laundry pile was over there to break her fall.” I guess I have to give him that.
No comments:
Post a Comment