Am I Having a Baby?

Tonight my parents came over for pizza before heading back to the mountains now that my father’s stint operation is completed and a success all around.   Or, as my son said to my father tonight, “congratulations on your surgery.”  My mother told us at the dinner table a series of events that lead to the writing of this blog post.   Let me explain…

Several days ago I wrote in this blog that my father had had surgery.  All was well but that he was staying overnight at the hospital.   What I didn’t say in the post was that the observational overnight stay was planned from the start and all went completely to plan with the surgery.   My very best friend from childhood’s mother reads this blog (hi Joan!) and wanted to make sure my father was doing well so she called my mother after reading my post.   The unexpected call sparked a lovely conversation she and my mother had on the phone, since they hadn’t caught up in a while.   And that catching up caused a particular story to be retold.

It is the retelling of the story that the title of this post is about.   Because not only was the story retold on the phone between Joan and my mother, my mother retold the story again to my husband and children at the dinner table tonight.

There are stories in your life that get retold from time to time.  I’m forty-nine now.   This story happened when I was just over four-years-old, or about forty-five years ago.   I would venture to say it gets retold on average every three years, possibly more.   Which means I’ve heard the story at least fifteen times.   It is still endearing, even after all these years.

I was at preschool and had an accident in which a piece of playground equipment fell on me, directly on my nose.   It was metal, it was heavy, and I remember exactly how it happened and where I was when it happened.   I remember the bleeding.   There was lots of nose bleeding.   It went on for so long my parents had it looked at and they decided to do surgery because it had been broken.

This was in the day when anything and everything required an overnight stay in the hospital, so I got to spend the night.   To make it sound fun and exciting, my parents told me I was going to get to stay at the hospital overnight, just like Joan had done when she came home with  Jenny.   I remembered this and wasn’t upset apparently because the next thing I asked with a tone of wonderment in my voice was was, “am I having a baby?”

That story is told for two reasons.  The first one is the baby misconception part.   The other is that the doctors found a pea shoved way up in my nose when they did surgery.   We don’t know when I put it up there and/or if it would have sprouted.   It has certainly sparked a lifetime’s debate about the possibilities though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been warned multiple as in far too many times he is responsible for managing his screen time.   Today he was allowed some time but after two warnings, continue and didn’t stop until we came to confront him.   He was all about excuses.   When he was given the consequence of losing additional screen time he had accrued for not managing his time he became very, very upset, yelling at us and calling us names and making demands.   He lost more screen time incrementally until he finally realized he wasn’t going to win.   Hopefully he will learn from this lesson.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is creating a “creature” out of geometric shapes for school.   She wants to make a goldfish.   I’m not sure how we’re going to make a goldfish, “that has to be three-dimensional” my daughter tells me.   Maybe I’ll stick a picture of it here when we see what she creates.   It’s due next Friday.