Fools & Babies

We had two traumatic events with our littlest ones this past week. Both things reminded me of the old adage that God looks out for fools and babies (and aren't we glad?!).
While we were at the lake last weekend, Jason took Margaret in the bedroom to change her diaper. When he laid her down on the bed she looked up at him and stopped breathing. I cannot imagine what was going through Jason's mind, but he kept cool and she soon began to choke something up. He rolled her onto her side and she threw up a small button. She was completely fine, thankfully, but wow it was scary to think of the what ifs (primarily, what if I had laid her down for a nap not realizing the button was there). But, we cannot live our lives scared of the what ifs. Gosh, isn't that a challenge for all of us?
The next thing happened today while I was home with the babies. Eli had been napping for about an hour when I heard him crying. He usually naps for about 3 hours so I figured something had awakened him and he would go on back to sleep. When he didn't settle down, I realized the crying was getting increasingly loud and emotional. I went in to check on him and found him with both legs outside of his crib and his right knee had actually come through the slats and was stuck and twisted. It was terrible. Eli was scared and in pain. I barely touched his leg to try to move it and he wailed in pain. I called Jason but when he didn't answer I remembered that he was in a meeting at the time. This one was on my shoulders, I had to figure out what to do. I tried two or three times to free Eli's leg to no avail. I kept picturing my old Adam-12 lunchbox with the kid who had his head stuck through a wrought iron fence. Where's a good cop when you need one?

Just before I was about to call my neighbor and ask him to come over and saw the slats off the bed I managed to create enough slack in the slats to raise Eli's leg up high enough to gently push his knee back through the slats. I quickly picked my little guy up and held him close and, through my own tears I asked him if he was okay. He lifted his big, sad eyes and looked at me and said pitifully, "I'm okay mommy". It took him a couple minutes to want to walk on his leg and it remained sore to the touch the rest of the day, but no damage done.
So, that's our family drama report for now. Hopefully my heart will have a while to rest now!