When she was just 10 months old, she decided to come down with the rotavirus during a flight from Chicago to San Jose. If you are eating as you read this, you might want to come back when you're done. You would never think that a little 10-month-old body could hold such volumes of puke. It just kept coming and coming...all over me, all over person next to us, and all down the aisle as I tried to make a break for the toilet. I had a change of clothes for her, but not for me. And I definitely didn't pack a clean pair of Dockers for the middle-aged man sitting next to us. I had gotten the worst of it though. Audrey was happy as a clam once she had purged herself of every drop of bodily fluid inside her. Meanwhile, I had to sit through the rest of the flight in overalls that were soaked to my skin in puke and non-potable airplane toilet water. The guy sitting next to us must have hit the eject button and parachuted into the Rockies because he was nowhere to be found when we returned to our seats.
When she was 3 1/2 years old, Audrey was mauled by a dog. On her face. I have pictures, but I won't be posting them. It was hideous and awful and horrifying. She had something like 20 stitches in her face, and her head swelled up like a pumpkin. Which was fitting because it happened just before Halloween. This was by far the worst of our emergencies, but it was not our last.
Two Halloweens later, just this past fall, we made another festive trip to the ER. This time she fell off of monkey bars and broke her arm. It would be the second time in three years that she would get some kind of Halloween garb cut off of her by an EMT. When she was bit by the dog, it was an orange-and-black Old Navy t-shirt. This time around she was dressed in her full costume. As a cupcake. Which gives me an excuse to post this picture:
This costume represents the apex of Halloween costumery for us. It will never get any better than this. I could tell you that I found a picture in a Pottery Barn Kids catalog (theirs was like $70) and sent it off to my crafty beaver of a sister with orders for her to replicate it...but she doesn't read my blog, so I totally made it myself. If you don't think this is the cutest thing you ever saw, then you seriously need to kiss my ass.
Which brings us to the present. This week, Audrey fell off of a swing at school. No, not the playground kind. That would be too normal. She somehow fell out of one of those lycra hammock swings that are commonly found in sensory/motor rooms for occupational therapy. I guess she was being swung by one of the aids and somehow flew out of it with extreme volacity, missing the padded mat and landing forehead-first on the thinly carpeted floor.
I took her to the pediatrician to have her checked out for a concussion, and made sure to take along the school's accident report lest they think that I was responsible for her injuries. Because it really really looks like she's gone a couple of rounds with somebody.
Through it all, Audrey is almost always in her usual good spirits, unlike her sobbing train wreck of a mother. Witness her text convo with Lauren yesterday:
Lauren: How's your booboo
Audrey: It is very good.