Living With Broken Glass

Big clean up yesterday.  Nathan slipped while holding onto the glass door on our video cabinet and the safety glass shattered.  All over everything.  It scattered across our entire TV room, over both couches, into the stuffed toys in their box, the various bins of other toys.  Everywhere.  Over an hour and a half to clean up and that was with two of us working on it.

Unfortunately, we had to put the boys into locked rooms to keep them from hurting themselves.  I just couldn’t get them to understand to stay out of the TV room.  So I set up Nathan in our room with a DVD and Alex in his room with some toys.  Dave came home early to help out, so he alternated between the two of them while Shelby and I cleaned up.

Then, just to make things more complicated, Alex helped himself to his bowl of green bean puree which had been sitting on one of the tables.  I was focused on cleaning up and didn’t catch him in time.  So then came the worrying about whether or not he had eaten broken glass.  I was wavering back and forth, telling myself it was likely since I’d picked up glass off that table but then Alex is so sensitive to texture that it seemed unlikely he’d eat something as solid as glass.  He wasn’t showing any symptoms, no bleeding, no discomfort, usual activity level.

I ended up taking him to the hospital just to be safe.  I knew it was likely to be a long boring wait and a difficult process, but I also know I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t and something happened.  Luck was with us and it looks like either Alex didn’t ingest any glass or the pieces were small enough to be wrapped up in food and aren’t going to cause any trouble.

One of the other parents waiting asked if I was upset at Nathan for breaking the door and causing all the trouble.  I can honestly say I’m not angry with him.  Annoyed at myself for not paying attention to him when I knew he liked to hang onto that door.  Also annoyed at myself for not taking those doors down.  I’d thought about it several weeks ago but never quite found the time to act on it.  But I’m not angry at Nathan.  He was playing and if I’d been paying closer attention, it wouldn’t have happened.