Here's the 4-1-1 er, um I mean the 9-1-1

Well, what have I done today??? Well my day first started at 6:00 a.m. (which may seem like a normal time for some of you to get up but for this night-owl it is a few hours too early for me) when I heard my mother-in-law, Christena trying to help my father-in-law, Henry understand that the rest of the house was trying to sleep. How my boys sleep through these conversations they have in the middle of the night, I don't know.

Henry has not been sleeping well and despite trying to give him something to encourage sleeping he has been waking every hour or so through the night for most of the last several months. It has escalated in the last couple of weeks. I don't know the last time Christena was able to sleep straight through from night to morning. He wakes and gets dressed, goes into her room and turns on the lights, fumbles through her dresser, comes upstairs "to see Douglas," and tells her he wants her to get up with him so they "can get going home." You can imagine, I am sure, how hard this would be if you were a well-rested person. Now try to imagine your frustration with sleep deprivation. Remember what it was like when you first brought your baby home from the hospital and wondered if you would ever sleep again? It's kind of like that only there is an added layer of stress as you try to work through the fact that although he is old enough to know better, he *doesn't* know any better.

This morning, after I woke to them talking loudly, I moved out to the sofa and to sleep some more. Around 7:45 I heard Henry come to the kitchen door and try to open it but we had had the foresight to lock it when going to bed last night. He went back downstairs for a while. A short time later he was back at the door but this time he knocked. I answered it and told him Douglas was in the shower and then would be going to work. He said he was going back downstairs but when Douglas came out of the bathroom he saw Henry continuing to stand at the top of the stairs.

Sometime after that (so any time after 8 a.m.) Henry let himself out the back door and left the property. He was dressed in a turtleneck and a cardigan with his pyjamas under his dress pants. Ordinarily on a March day that would be enough to keep him warm except we are in the middle of a cold spell and he went out with the temperatures around -20 C. Apparently a woman saw him walking along the road and convinced him to get into her car. She wrapped him in a blanket and called 9-1-1. (9-9-9 in the UK) Around 9:10 a.m. the police managed to find out his name and called to let us know they were bringing him home. I have no idea how long he was out in those frigid temperatures.

Once Henry was home the boys got up and moved around doing normal morning things. Fergus was anxious to get back outside to work on his "fort" so I sent them out around 11:00 to get some fresh air, Vitamin D and exercise. I watched them run around and play, listened (while I worked) to them carving away at the frozen snow beside our house and just trusted that they were enjoying themselves.

While they were outside I was checking my work email and discovered that I can anticipate a minimum $3500.00 pay cut from the hospital this year. YAY! You can imagine that I was in a wonderful emotional space when Fergus and Quinn knocked on the door at 11:54 a.m. asking to come in.

Quinn had blood on his face and I saw there was a cut on his lip. I asked him what had happened and he let me know that it was ice that cut his lip. At this point I was having trouble putting everything together and assumed he fell on the ice and cut his lip. He told me he wanted to see what his face looked like and so once we had his snow clothes off, I took him into our room to have a good look. The blood was smeared up his cheek and looked to be more substantial than I knew it was.

We moved into the bathroom to wash his face off so I could get a better look at his lip. He was trying to tell me what had gone on but then said, "Mommy I can't really see."

"What do you mean you can't really see?" voice rising rapidly.

"I can't see, Mommy!" fear and panic in his voice.

I looked over to ask again what he meant and I saw his body convulsing and he lost consciousness in my arms (I am so thankful I was there to catch him). I grabbed him and took him to the floor in the living room. I was yelling his name and his face was white as a sheet.

Fergus got Christena and then the found the phone for me. As Quinn has never passed out before my first thought was to call 9-1-1 and ask for an ambulance. By the time the paramedics arrived Quinn had better colour and was more upset by the commotion than anything else.

They took his vitals and did a glucose test (yeah, Quinn *really* doesn't like the glucometre) and said he was okay. I chose not to have him taken to the hospital as the more I thought about it the more I realised that it was likely anxiety that caused him to pass out. The blood on his face and knowing I don't like them eating icicles was probably enough stress to cause him to become overly anxious and lose consciousness. I am to keep a watchful eye over him today and take him right to the hospital should he pass out again. (Like they really needed to tell me that . . .)

What really happened outside??? Well, he pulled an icicle off the furnace vent on the side of the house. It is SO cold outside that the icicle stuck to his damp lip. When he pulled it off he took skin off too. This caused the bleeding. (Remember putting your tongue on the cold metal pole when you were a kid?? This is pretty similar to that, except that the metal pole isn't as easy to carry around with you as the icicle.) No fall, no concussion, no major catastrophe.

So, that was my day so far. Actually, that was the first three hours of my day. How was your day? I know my BIL was hit by a car this morning. (Not hard enough to be hospitalized but hard enough to know he didn't like it. And when asked if he got the plate number or make and model of the car that hit him, my source tells me that he simply answered, "No, but I gave him one of my patented evil glares.") Anyone else find today not to be the day of their dreams?????