That’s right, Nathan is grounded from TV today for not minding.

He totally gets it, too. After breakfast, we normally let him watch an episode of Blue’s Clues, but not today. He asked for Blue, but I reminded him that he doesn’t get to watch any of his shows today due to continuously getting out of bed last night. “Okay, Mommy,” he said quietly without resisting. He knows what he did. He knows he’s supposed to stay in bed at night. And he understands that he now has to deal with the consequences. I know he doesn’t like it, but at least he’s accepting it.

In other news, Nathan and I still have that cough. Mine is getting a little better, but Nathan’s is still junky-sounding and deep. But on the bright side, I successfully taught him to cover his mouth with his elbow when he coughs. And he does! He’s pretty good at remembering to do it, even when he’s in the process of running or playing with his toys.

He’s losing his baby-ness and is becoming more and more like a little boy.

In fact, Paul’s mom told me about the last time Nathan was over at their house, he picked his nose, opened up a drawer, and promptly flung his booger into it. Can you believe that? That’s not something babies do, that’s for sure.

I have so many more similar antics to look forward to, don’t I?

When we learn about the letter “B,” for example, I’ll ask him what sound(s) that particular letter makes and then we’ll talk about different words that start with that letter. I turn it into a fun game and make it something exciting and interesting. Whenever I ask Nathan if he would like to talk about a new letter, he gets so excited, claps his hands, and will even do a little dance. So, after I drew on the board and we talked about the letter “B,” Nathan walked around the house saying, “B is for book! Book starts with the letter B! B says buh… buh… buh!”

I’m so glad he likes learning and loves to read. As long as he keeps up a love of learning and reading, the sky is the limit for him.

Nathan has his first visit to the Emergency Room on Wednesday. We were at the park, having a good ole time together. We were the only ones there. We had initially met one of my friends and her kids, but after they left, I decided to let Nathan stay a bit longer. Then, a couple of men appeared from nowhere and walked around the play area, staring at us the whole time. Then they stood off to the side and talked to each other for a few minutes while continuing to stare at me and Nathan. They started walking back towards the play area, making me nervous… they were in their early-to-mid twenties and had no business hanging out at a playground without having kids there themselves. They sauntered over to the swings and proceeded to swing while still watching us.

I grabbed ahold of Nathan’s hand and told him that it was time to go. I’m not a paranoid person, but I started thinking that if I screamed, it would take the nearest person at least 30 seconds to run to us… that is, if anyone even bothered to help. I had tunnel vision- I was focused on getting us out of there so I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been to Nathan, therefore I was unable to anticipate what he did next.

When he saw we were walking back towards his stroller, he had a temper tantrum and collapsed into an angry little crying heap on the ground. Since I had a firm grip on his hand, it dislocated his elbow. I realized something was wrong when Nathan started crying in pain, grabbing his forearm with his right hand, and pinching his skin.

“Hurt! Scared, Mommy!” he wailed as he cradled his injured arm.

When I saw what I had done, I got sick to my stomach and almost threw up on myself. Fortunately, the hospital was just a couple blocks away, so we made a trip to the ER. The doctor was very nice and empathetic, and said that what happened is actually quite common and is called Nursemaid’s Elbow.  He was able to quickly maneuver the elbow back into place.

When the doctor told Nathan it was all done and okay to use his arm now, Nathan refused to believe him. He walked to the door and jiggled the door handle.

“Wanna go bye bye! Go home? Pweese? Home?” he cried as tears trickled down his cheeks.

“Not yet, little man. I need you to give me a high five so I can see that you move your arm,” replied the doctor.

“NO! HOME!” Nathan wailed pitifully.

“Come here, Nathan,” I said. As I gathered the boy up in my arms I said, “I’m going to kiss your elbow, and when I do, it’s going to be all better ok? No more hurt.” And I kissed his little arm up and down. When I was done, Nathan stopped crying, raised his arm to his face, and gave me a big tear-filled smile.

“All better, Mommy! Thanks!” he said happily.

Sometimes they just need Mommy’s kiss, huh?

Well, the story doesn’t end there, unfortunately. A couple days later, on Friday, we went to a Mommy Lunch. It’s hosted once or twice a month by a local hospital for moms (and dads too!). It’s free, and it lasts for about an hour. They have toys set out and volunteers there to watch the kids so the moms can enjoy a meal while the kids play. It was raining that day, so when it was time to leave, I held my purse, diaper bag (each weighing approximately as much as a Sumo Wrestler), and a giant umbrella with my left arm. I held on to Nathan with my right hand.

I wasn’t thinking.

And of course, in the parking lot, what did Nathan do?

He LUNGED away from me. While I was holding his hand. In the rain. With cars around.

So his elbow was dislocated a SECOND time in just two days.

Panicking, I picked him up and raced back inside. The lady who runs the mommy group is a nurse, so I went straight to her, told her what happened, and asked her if she could fix it. By this time, I was sobbing. I could not believe this happened to my child AGAIN… TWICE. She said that yes, she knew how to fix it, but she wasn’t legally allowed to so I would have to take him to the ER again.

Which would have been fine. But our insurance copay for emergency room visits is $100. We aren’t poor by any means, but we are a family of three living off of one income, a total of $200 for two ER visits is a lot of money to fork out unexpectedly in a span of just two days. So I relayed my concern to the nurse, and she is actually close friends with Nathan’s pediatrician.  A $25 copay for an office visit is much more manageable than $100. Unfortunately, she could not get ahold of him on his cell, so she tried calling the office. They said they preferred I take him to the ER. When she told them about the steep copay, they said they could look at him if we stopped first and got him x-rayed. That was so unneccessary… his arm was not fractured or broken. There was no swelling, no discoloration, and Nathan was running around the room playing.  He was not in nearly as much pain as he was when it happened at the park. I was waaaaay more upset by his dislocated elbow than he was.

So anyway, after the pediatrician’s office said that, I said I would call my husband and see what he wanted to do. I hated bothering him at work, and I knew he would be aggravated with me for holding onto the same arm that Nathan dislocated just two days prior. I feel so horrible for repeating the same mistake again. I’m supposed to protect my child from harm, not cause it.

Paul wanted to come by and see how it looked (since he was nearby anyway, finishing up his lunch break) and then we would figure out what to do from there. When he arrived, he took one look at Nathan’s elbow and said that we definitely needed to go to the ER. It wasn’t distorted or anything, but it was limp and it hurt Nathan to move it. Paul didn’t want to try to move the arm around and said it was best to let a doctor do it. It’s better to be safe than sorry…

SO. Back to the ER. We were taken into the triage room after only 5 or 10 minutes, ahead of the other people that were there. Once we were in the triage room (they recognized us since we were just there), a Physician’s Assistant came in, reset Nathan’s elbow in less than a second, and we were ready to go. He also showed me how to do it myself since this keeps occurring. As we were waiting on the paperwork, I talked to the triage nurse about what happened. I was a sobbing mess; I felt absolutely horrible for allowing this to happen again. She told me that yes, I was holding the same arm, but had I been holding the other arm, the it could have happened to the other arm. She said that some kids are just inherently more prone to it because of soft, growing ligaments and that it’s not something I should beat myself up over because it’s a fact-of-life; it happens. Some kids, she said, have been in the ER 10-15 times for it. It’s quite common and it’s something they see all the time. She also said it’s even more common in strong-willed children (like Nathan) because they try even harder to get away from their parents. Regardless, I still felt horrible.

So once the paperwork came, she sent me to checkout. And get this… they didn’t charge a copay!! Can you believe it? I even specifically asked if there was one, just to be sure, and they said no.

Wow. What a relief.

So I’ve come up with a plan to hopefully prevent this from ever happening again. Nathan has a little monkey harness. It’s like a tiny back-pack that straps around his chest, and it has a really long tail that the parent can hold on to. I haven’t used it yet because, I didn’t know this until I became a mommy, they are “controversial.” Some people are busybodies, and they opine that putting a child on a harness akin to treating them like an animal. They bloviate about how parents should teach their children not to run away from them, and how parents need to parent, and how “leashes” (as they love to call them) are the lazy way out.

Well, these people apparently have never had an abnormally strong-willed, exceptionally determined child with a habit of attempting to wrench himself away from the parent with such force that his elbow becomes dislocated. So their opinions about how I choose to keep my child safe are irrelevant to me. If anyone has the audacity to reprimand me for choosing not to risk another dislocated elbow, I will politely inform them them that this is my choice to keep my child safe due to being in the ER twice for a dislocated elbow. I am not going to be leading him around like a puppy. I will have him hold my hand and the harness will be a backup, that way if he lets go of my hand, there is no danger of him running into traffic, etc.

I’m so glad this week is over. It was emotionally exhausting. Nathan is perfectly fine now, though. After they reset it, any pain he had completely disappeared. There is no lingering pain, and he immediately regained full use of his arm again. He’s back to being his typical little self. I was more traumatized by the two ordeals than my child was. I hope it never, ever happens again. It’s such a nauseating, disheartening feeling to cause your child pain.

“Nathan, no no! You don’t touch the door!” I said as I shut the door behind me.

“I sowy!” Nathan said.

“I know you’re sorry,” I said, “but you’re not allowed to touch the door. You locked Mommy out again.” Then Nathan’s little eyes filled with tears.

“I in biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig twouble,” he moaned as the tears spilled out of his eyes, leaving little paths of glistening sadness on his cheeks. I may have melted just a little. I opened up my arms and drew my son to me.

“This is your warning,” I said as I held him close. I really, REALLY didn’t want to put the little guy in time out because my heart was already breaking seeing him cry. “But next time, ” I continued, “you won’t have a warning. You’ll have Big Trouble for sure and a time out.”

“I sowy, Mommy” he said against my neck.

I love that kid. I love him more than anything in this world.

I can’t believe I never blogged about this.

So anyway, we found one of those indoor playgrounds in a fast food restaurant. From the outside, the play space looked massive. It beckoned to us, looming over us at about two stories tall. So we hauled Nathan out of his carseat and into the restaurant.

As soon as I opened the door to the play space and looked around, my heart sank. Yeah, the play space was two stories tall, but it was NARROW. The room it was in was maybe 12 ft x 12 ft, with the play space taking up a good portion of it… leaving an available space of about 12 ft x 4 ft. And the play space was completely vertical. There were a number of ledges arranged in step-formation for kids to shimmy up, but there is no way an adult could because there was only about a foot of space available to squeeze through in order to climb to the next ledge. Someone like me would get stuck. It was a safety hazard if you ask me.

Of course, the kids all had to take their shoes off to play, so the smell of dirty feet permeated the tiny enclosure. There was no air conditioning or any air flow whatsoever, so it was stuffy and stale, which only exacerbated the dirty feet smell.

I sat on one of the benches and tried not to touch anything. My friend T appeared to be just as uncomfortable as me, but we couldn’t just leave. No, once you take a two-year-old into a play area, you cannot just turn around and leave unless you’re wanting to experience the apocalypse.

I couldn’t let Nathan climb the contraption because he’s so little, if he got hurt, I would have not be able to squeeze my way through the ledges to help him. Nathan, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to the stale air and dirty feet smell. And even though I wouldn’t let him climb the play thingy, he just ran around that tiny little enclosure, clapped his hands, and had a ball.

In fact, he was running so hard and enjoying himself so much that he quit paying attention and ran right smack-dab INTO A WINDOW. Just like how you see in the cartoons, with his little arms and legs splayed out. He kinda bounced off it, rubbed his head, but shook it off like it was nothing.

Another gross thing about the play space is there were a number of kids in there, and at least two of them were sick. One had a nasty, hacking cough and the other had a disgusting, snotty nose. You know, complete with those gross snot bubbles. And she was constantly wiping her mucus faucet with her hand and then she would TOUCH everything.

What made it even worse was her mother came in there once and was all like, Oh look at your poor little nose, my sweet sick little baby, blah blah blah. And I’m thinking to myself, CAN YOU NOT SEE YOUR KID IS SPREADING THE MUCUS PLAGUE ALL OVER THE PLACE??

My left eye actually twitched a little over the mom’s obtuse complacency. I mean, who can be so oblivious to others that they let their snot-bubble spewing kid sow their noxious germs into the porous plastics where said germs will fester and possibly mutate into an ULTRA MUCUS PLAGUE and other kids will then pick them up and spread the love? Who does that? SATAN??

Can you imagine the self control it took for me to not yank my child out of there?

I just didn’t have the heart to. Nathan loves being around other kids and was having a blast just running around. We stayed for about an hour, and let me tell you, when we finally left, FRESH AIR NEVER FELT SO GOOD.

No, not a good place for a mom like me who is trying really hard to control her OCD tendencies. Needless to say, I sanitized the shit out of Nathan’s hands once we left and fortunately, he didn’t get sick from the episode.  Lesson learned. It will probably be a long, long, LONG time before I take my child back to one of those indoor play spaces. My friend and I were so dismayed… it felt like we were tricked. I mean, from the outside, it was so big and inviting… It was like a bait-and-switch, and we were very disappointed.

I mean, really, really stubborn. And strong-willed. Determined. Steadfast.

Just a few days ago, I heard one of my cats meow in exasperation. I slinked through the kitchen and caught Nathan in the living room, throwing tufts of cat fur into the air and DANCING IN IT while clapping his hands. I saw my cat Andrew hunkered wide-eyed in the corner. He looked as if he thought he was naked.

I bet he felt naked with all the fur Nathan had pulled out and was DANCING in.

“NO! Nathan, that’s not nice! You don’t hurt the cats… Time Out!” I said as I grabbed his cat-fur covered hands. I steered him into his Time Out Corner and set the timer for three minutes (the amount of time Nathan gets in time out depends on his infraction. Milder infractions get him two minutes). When three minutes was up, I returned to Nathan and squatted down on his level.

“Do you understand why Mommy put you in time out?” I asked.

He looked at his hands.

“You pulled out the cat’s fur. You hurt the cat. No touching the cats, Nathan.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied as he did the sign for sorry across his chest.

“Nathan, I need you to say ‘No cat,’” I said.

Nathan mumbled something unintelligible.

“If you want out of time out, you need to say ‘No cat,’” I prodded. Nathan crossed his arms over his chest.

“NO!” he yelled.

“Okay then, you made the choice to have more time out,” I replied. I set the timer for another minute. When the timer went off, I repeated the process.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again…

In fact, I repeated the process a grand total of THIRTY SEVEN times. That means that THIRTY SEVEN times in a row, I asked Nathan if he was ready to say “No cat.” And THIRTY SEVEN times in a row, Nathan obstinately refused. Until finally, a grand total of FORTY minutes later (including the three minutes for his first time out) and with tears streaming down his cheeks and snot dripping out his nose, he begrudgingly gave me what I asked for.

“No cat,” he whispered. That’s right. He wouldn’t even speak it. HE WHISPERED IT.

With his arms crossed over his chest and his chin up in the air.

But at least he said it, right? My kid may be stubborn, but his mama is even MORE stubborn. Getting tired of the discipline and giving in is not an option for me… giving in means that Nathan would know that all he needs to do to get his way is put up a fight and eventually I’ll cave. And then? Then I’m left dealing with an A-1 Brat. Not gonna happen in this house. It is my responsibility to prepare this child for life, and letting him have his way teaches him nothing.

Even if it takes THIRTY SEVEN repetitions.

Hey, no one ever said parenthood was easy.

Click.

Too late.

Nathan locked the deadbolt. WHILE MY HAND WAS STILL HOLDING THE KNOB. I hadn’t let go of it, so the door had not even latched closed. He was that fast.

My heart dropped down into my stomach.

Nathan giggled impishly behind the door.

My mom saw the look on my face and jumped out of her car. “Oh no!” she said. “Did he lock you out?” I didn’t even have to answer. I’m sure my blanched face was answer enough. Meanwhile, Nathan stood on the other side of the door, giggling as I peered through the glass.

“HI, MOMMY!” he laughed.

“NATHAN! Open the door, please,” I said through gritted teeth. Nathan flung the curtains over the door’s window to either side. “Mommy! Hello! How are you?” he sang. Then he clapped his hands while spinning around in a circle.

“I want you to open the door, that’s how I am!” I responded. “Nathan, turn the lock on the door the other way, please.”

Nathan jiggled the deadbolt, but to no avail. He didn’t understand what he had done. All he knew was that he now had the ENTIRE HOUSE TO HIMSELF. And what does a two-year-old who now has the ENTIRE HOUSE TO HIMSELF do? THEY RUN. They run around like a crazy little cracked-out bull. I watched hopelessly through the window as he tore through the living room and kitchen. Then I heard his little feet stomping their merry way into my bedroom.

I knocked on the door.

I heard little feet come running.

“Hello?” he said when he reached the door. I knocked again. He knocked back.

“Nathan, open this door please!” I beckoned.

“No please!” he replied as he knocked some more. Then he took off once again. I turned to my mom and asked her to keep an eye on him through the window while I borrowed her cell phone to call my husband.

No answer. Of course. Doesn’t that always happen?

So I did the only other thing I knew to do… I drove to Paul’s grandparents’ house (they live about 2-3 minutes away). I pulled up and saw Paul’s grandfather outside working. I rolled down the window.

“Nathan locked me out. Do you happen to have a spare key?”

He smiled and nodded his head. It was the smile of knowing. The smile of With a kid like yours, how did this not happen sooner? A smile of understanding and empathy. I wondered if the same thing had ever happened to him. I made a mental note to ask sometime. He walked inside and reemerged after a couple of minutes with the spare key.

“THANK YOU!” I said as I was leaving. He smiled that knowing smile.

I raced back to the house, heart pounding in my chest, praying to God that my child didn’t drown himself in the toilet. My mom was still standing on the porch. Somehow, she had managed to keep Nathan fairly interested in her conversation by enticing him to stay near the door by dangling one of his favorite outside toys in front of the window.

“Is he okay?” I called as I raced to the front door.

“He’s just fine,” my mom responded. She was so calm. “I just kept him by the door. Whenever he ran off, I knocked and he’d come running back.”

“I can’t believe he did this,” I said as I slid the key into the lock.

Click.

Finally, I was inside. My child ran up to me, arms wide open. “Hi, Mommy! Hello!” he called excitedly. He truly didn’t understand what all the hubbub was about. He only did what he’s seen me do time and time again when Paul leaves…. but he still had to be put into timeout because touching the door is off limits.

And this whole story is exactly the reason why he is not allowed to touch the door.