So here's what happened the other night...

I was all set to write a random, light-hearted post Tuesday night (the topic of which I genuinely can't even remember now,) and then I had my first "I'm about fifteen and a half seconds away from calling 911 for my child" moment. So now that everyone has recovered, here's a post about that instead.

This picture has nothing to do with this story. Other than that A) It was taken the same day, and
B) You can see Lucas's legs, and this story is about one of them. 

Lucas and I both have colds (Again. Yay.) Monday night (or really, Tuesday morning at like 4:30am,) Lucas woke up coughing so hard that he threw up (the child throws up kind of easily,) so Tuesday night I decided to put him to bed about fifteen minutes early in the hopes that we'd both get a little more rest. After I put him to bed, I emptied the dishwasher then made myself a waffle. Obviously. And then around 8:30, I heard Lucas shriek and then start fussing. He's been known to make weird noises in his sleep, so I stood outside his bedroom door to try to determine whether he actually needed me to come in. Which is when I heard him whimper, "My leg! My leg!" I went into his room, and his leg was stuck above the knee between two of the slats on his crib, which seemed like a fairly minor problem. So I reached in to pull his leg back through, and... he screamed the loudest I've ever heard him scream. And started bawling. And his leg didn't budge.

So I tried again. And he screamed again. At this point, I started to cry, because he was really, really stuck. Dan was working a night shift, so naturally, I called him in a giant panic and asked what the heck I should do. (I'm hideously awful at emergencies.) He suggested calling a friend of ours who lives nearby, and - if that didn't work - to call 911. So I called our friend Caleb, whose wife turned out to be away from home, so he was home with his kids and couldn't leave, but he told me not to worry, he'd find someone who could come help. So I got off the phone and propped Lucas up in bed to see if changing his position would help, and then tried again, and he started sobbing so hard that... he threw up. Repeatedly. In my hands, on himself, in his bed. Then my phone rang, and I managed to answer it while literally holding a handful of my son's vomit. It was Caleb, who told me that another friend, Cory was on his way over.

Since Lucas was majorly freaking out, I was doing my best to keep us both calm by singing to him and praying with him that we would get his leg out. (Sweet side story: every time I would say amen after a prayer, Lucas would say through tears, "More pray?") Staying calm is not really my thing, but I've got to give myself credit for neither hyperventilating nor screaming. Yay Bethany!

When Cory showed up, he tried to pull Lucas's leg out, which resulted in more screaming. After several attempts by both of us, Cory pulled as hard as he could on the bars, while I pulled on Lucas's leg one more time, and... we finally got him free! And then of course I lost it while hugging Lucas. I held him and we both cried for a few minutes while Cory took the gross bed linens to the laundry room (Good friends help free your child from his crib. Great friends then stick around to clean up your child's puke.) When I put Lucas down, he ran into the living room, spotted my waffle, said, "My leg stuck! Yummy waffle?" and then ate my snack. So on the bright side, I was officially much more traumatized by the incident than my son was. (He hasn't brought it up since then. I, on the other hand, can't stop talking about it.)

So... that was my adventure for the week. This motherhood thing is definitely not boring. Anyone else have a "my kid got stuck" story to share? I need something to read while I eat a waffle.

The one in which I am bad at emergencies but great at smelling.

A "fun" fact about me is that I'm fairly awful under pressure. If you ever have an emergency, I will be happy to sympathize with you after the fact, but you really, really shouldn't call me for help during the emergency unless you're prepared to give me very detailed step-by-step instructions on what to do. I don't even freak out, necessarily; I just become completely immobile because I literally have no idea what I should do. It's like my brain sees an emergency and decides to take a time-out until the emergency is over. Fortunately, I am married to someone who has chosen "being good at emergencies" as a career THREE times. He worked as an EMT while attending police academy, then he worked as a police officer while attending medical school, and now he works as an emergency physician. So he is professionally good at emergencies, and I am a disaster at them. I have often maintained that Dan is proof that God takes care of me. I know of only one police officer/ER doctor in the world, and I'm married to him.

Anyway, this morning when I woke up, I came out into our living room and smelled a very, very faint smell of natural gas. (Dan hadn't smelled anything when he left for work, but he always tells me I have the nose of a bloodhound, so it's not unusual for me to smell something that he can't.) Since I just told you how bad I am at dealing with emergencies, I will now give you a multiple choice quiz to test your reading comprehension skills.

Question: When I smelled gas in my house this morning, what did I do?
     
     A - Called the gas company.
     B - Called 911.
     C - Ran around screaming.
     D - Stood there sniffing for a while, made a cup of coffee, opened a window, drank a few sips of coffee, sent text messages to various people that said "I just woke up, and I think our house kind of smells like natural gas! What should I do?" And then when my professionally good-at-emergencies husband responded with, "Call the gas company and get out of the house," I promptly forgot the name of our gas company and then was unable to figure out how I could find their phone number, so he had to text it to me. And then I put on eyeliner before I called them. 

Um. The answer is D. D, people! I put on eyeliner before I called the gas company.

The fact that I'm writing this is obviously an indication that I'm not dead, so that's good. The gas company sent someone out, and she walked around with some sort of meter that checked for gas in our house, and she found nothing. And then she went outside and checked our line and our meter, and still found nothing. So of course I felt like an idiot. But at least I was wearing eyeliner.

She left, and I took Lucas upstairs and put him in the pack and play so that I could take a shower now that I had been assured that we weren't going to die, and I sent follow-up texts to the people I had texted initially (and by the way, out of the three people I texted, all three knew to call the gas company before putting on eyeliner...) letting them know that I was just crazy and there was no gas. And then I heard a knocking at the door and then someone open the door and yell, "Hello? Hello?"

It turns out that the gas company sprays something on your gas meter to check for leaks, and at first she hadn't seen anything, but then when she went to rinse it off before she left, there were tons of bubbles all over it, which meant there was a leak in our gas meter. Outside. Far away from where I had smelled the gas. And all of the windows were closed. At least three times, she said "There is no way you could've smelled that from inside." Except that I did. And when I texted Dan to tell him, he responded with "Ha!!! That's because you are a bloodhound."

It was a simple fix, and we weren't ever actually in danger, which is nice, but this is probably an indication that Dan should conduct mandatory disaster drills in our home on a weekly basis so that I don't drown because a water pipe bursts and I spend hours sitting under it while wondering what I should do.

In the meantime, if you can think of a good name for a super hero whose super power is an incredible sense of smell but whose main weakness is an inability to do anything when there's an emergency, please let me know.