Not always a happy place for some

A few days ago we found out the gender of our 3rd child. Very exciting!! Before the appointment I had some time to kill and sitting at home waiting to go to the doctor didn't sound all that exciting. So the boys and I went to BYU. It was a fantastically beautiful day it would have been wrong to not enjoy it. It would, however, not be such a fantastic day for my youngest son, E. His first tragedy struck while we were on a walk and discovered some beautiful flowers on a little tree. I helped the boys up onto a 2-3 foot ledge where the tree was. My oldest, A collected his flowers first and brought them to me. E, eager to do what his brother does hurried to grab some flowers too. He picked a handful, turned, his arm outstretched with his prize and began to run to me to give the flowers to me. The problem was, he had forgotten he was up on a ledge and instead of running up to me, he sort of swan dived off the ledge and landed completely on his face. His feet flew sky high as his head connected with the cement. As I hurried to make sure his face was still connected to the rest of him, I could hear gasps in the background, I looked, and a little crowd had collected. Great people. Just great. Please, just stare at the horror OR maybe you could MOVE on! Under close inspection I could see that yes, his face was still there and not sitting on the pavement, but he had lost some skin. His entire left eyebrow was scraped off, as well as part of his left cheek and his chin. No missing teeth, no bleeding, and his eyes weren't skeewompus. I washed his face off and put a band aid on him and just held him. He cried on my shoulder for quite some time until he was ready to lay down in the stroller and rest. I decided it might be a good time to go somewhere inside where it was quiet. So we went to the art museum. Pretty boring for kids-- and this time, me too. They were featuring Egyptian artifacts. Could have been cooler if I wasn't so focused on E and his head trauma. I noticed that a lady was following me and when she caught my eye she came up to me and said, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but I just wanted to make sure your little boy was okay. Do you know what the signs of a concussion are? I just want to make sure you know the signs." Surprised, and a little curious of how long she was following us I just responded with, "Thanks, he's fine. I work at a hospital, I know the signs." Then of course, after she left, I text my mom to make sure I actually DID know the signs of a concussion, haha. And no E does not have one.

After the museum, E was feeling much better about life. His brother A was anxious to get out of the museum and go back to the little man-made waterfall we were playing at earlier. They had little ducks there and the boys loved them. This also happened to be where E second tragedy occurred. We made it to the pond fine. Found our little sitting spot and proceeded to play. I was at this time letting Daddy M know what had happened to E while the boys played in the water. A few minutes in, I hear an angry screech, look up and see another parent rushing over to where my kids where playing. I get up to see what has happened now and see E going at it with a duck. Apparently he had corned some of the baby ducks so he could play with them and mommy duck went berserk. She was flapping her wings all over the place and chasing E, who I am proud to say, did not back down. He fought back, screaming and yelling at the duck, while she furiously beat her wings at him and tried to bite him. I told the boys to come here and explained to them why the mommy duck acted the way she did. They were satisfied with my answer and wanted to keep playing. Buuuut, I decided to go since the parent who watched all this unravel was looking at me with a 'you are a bad parent' stare. I'd like to see him take care of two boys when all he has is two dainty little girls over there, delicately playing near the water!

Thus ended our adventure at BYU. We left to pick up Daddy and drove to the doctor's office to find that we will be adding yet another BOY to the crew. Bring it on scary ledges, angry ducks, and judgmental people!