When my youngest daughter was — gosh, she must have been about — well, yeah, I think she was around 2. She walked really early, so like she was already walking by this point, but I think she might have been like 18 months or, or whatever — she was no older than two. And, um, she loved to be wrapped up like a burrito in a blanket and then we’d like, while she was standing up, we’d like wrap it all around her and then like tuck it in under her chin so she could move her feet but nothing else, you know? And then she’d like walk around like that and she just — she loved it. And so we would do that for her all the time. Just wrap her up like a burrito and then she’d hobble, hobble through the apartment, like a burrito and then, um —
Oh, one weekend, it was Sunday. We had friends in town and they had just left that morning, thank goodness. And, um, she wanted to be wrapped up like a burrito, so we wrapped her up and she was just having a great old time, you know, tottering around like that. And then she was tottering back over to me, and she tripped, and she couldn’t put her hands down, right? ‘Cause they were in the burrito blanket. And she hit her head on the side table next to the couch. And the moment I heard the sound of her head hitting that table — and it was like an IKEA cheapo table, it wasn’t like, solid oak or anything like that — but just the thunk that it made, I knew it was bad, you know? And so she’s on the floor, she’s crying and like I run over there, pick her up, and there’s just blood gushing from like — it looks like her eye. And it’s still a bit, like, absurdly funny in a way because she’s like, wrapped up in the blanket, so she can’t really move or do anything, right?
And so, I’m like yelling for my husband to get me a towel and he doesn’t really realize what’s happened, and as soon as I saw it I was like — well, I had to clean it, I had to get rid of the blood a little bit so I could see if her eye was okay, which it was, luckily. I mean, it barely missed her eye. But I could tell immediately she needed stitches. And so I was like, “Okay, we gotta go and, you know, take her to the hospital.” And you know, my other kid — who’s older, so she must’ve been like four-ish or whatever, I mean — she’s freaking out because she sees that her sister is hurt and everything, so she’s crying. And the one that got hurt, she’s screaming.
And I’m usually really good in an emergency, and I was, mostly, but for some reason, like — I had my pajama pants on, right? ‘Cause it was like Sunday evening, and I was in for the night, and I just could not decide whether to put on real pants or not. I felt like I was a cartoon character, I would literally like — to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right. Like, “Do I go get my pants, do I not get my pants? You know, do we — is that one minute for me to take — put my pants on gonna like, you know, make a difference in taking her to the ER? Whatever, whatev-” — Finally, I just put on my pants, and, uh, I was glad I did.
And, uh, so we left and had my parents meet us there so they could take my oldest, and she had a sleepover with them. But, um, it was really scary because in the car, uh, we couldn’t put her in her car seat because we couldn’t get the thing over her head. Like, she was too upset and like injured in the face and like, we just couldn’t put anything over her head like that belt thingy in the car seat, and so like my husband held her in the front seat, which was terrifying. I mean, I was driving. But, um — she was totally quiet, you know? Which is like scarier than screaming at that point, and she seemed kind of drowsy, and so we were trying to keep her from falling asleep because that’s just like something you hear, right? Like, for a head injury, that you shouldn’t let people sleep. Anyway, it was awful, she did get stitches.