My middle name should be Grace

Derek wanted to lay by Sydney because she was sad

I am a very klutzy person.  I am constantly tripping, falling, bruising, scraping, etc.  My most common injuries are a bruise to my left hip from repeatedly running into my bedpost when I get up to use the restroom in the middle of the night;crunched toes from hitting the bedpost the same time I get my hip, and a scraped right upper arm from cutting the corner from my bathroom too close and grazing the edge of the entertainment center.  Mostly I injure myself (getting caught in a pinsetter), once in a while I injure someone else (breaking a boy's collar bone playing basketball in high school), but our story today is about how I injured myself and someone else at the same time.  

Last night Matt went to the first BYU football game of the season.  The kids were all tucked into bed.  Derek had come down and said that Sydney was sad and he was going to lay by her for a minute.  He loves to take care of her.  Around 10:15 I decided I was ready for bed so I went upstairs to check on the kids one last time.  I found Derek tucked in next to Syd and they looked so cute and cozy on her crib mattress that I took a picture.  

I contemplated leaving Derek there for the night, but realized they might wake each other up, so I decided to haul Derek to his bed.  

(This is the part where I should tell you that one of my faults is that I always overestimate my abilities.  Especially in the strength department.)

I picked Derek up and he is almost 7, so he isn't a small kid.  He was complete dead weight.  I came to the doorway and contemplated putting him down so I could remove the baby gate from Sydney's doorway, but decided against it.)  

(This is the part where I should tell you that I am always looking for a shortcut, or the fastest way to do something.  This, combined with confession number one tends to get me into trouble sometimes.)  

So of course I think I can lift Derek and myself over the baby gate with no problem.  

I lift one leg over and as I am trying to lift Derek high enough so that his legs clear the gate he kind of wakes up and jerks.  His foot hits the gate and sends it flying forward.  So picture me straddling the gate, carrying a fifty-five pound boy.  You can imagine what happened next.  As the gate lurches forward, I, with Derek in my arms lurch forward as well.  As we fell, I tried to turn my body so as to cushion Derek's fall, but my legs were still trapped on either side of the gate.  We hit the ground, Derek's face hit my shoulder and my left foot took the brunt of the force of the fall.  The first thing I feel is excruciating pain in my left foot and right knee and then I look up to see blood pouring from Derek's nose.  He is screaming, but not really awake.  Blood is all over my arms, pjs and the carpet.  We fell right in front of the bathroom and so since I was still kind of tangled, I tried to push him in there to try and contain the blood.  I get untangled and realize I can't stand up.  I think I went into a little bit of shock, I felt all clammy and nauseous and I was moving so slowly (well, I was crawling). 

We make it to the bathroom.  I was crawling around, finding toilet paper for Derek.  I hold it up to his nose and ask him to hold it so I can try to stand up.  Laying on a bathroom floor with non-functioning extremities and trying to reach the nose of someone who is sitting on the toilet lid is no easy task, let me tell you.  So I ask Derek to hold the tissue, I let go, he won't hold it because he is basically still asleep and can't figure out what is going on, and blood keep pouring everywhere.  We repeated this scenario for about five minutes until the blood slowed down to not gushing and I figured he was already covered in blood and so was I so a little more wasn't going to matter.  I was able to stand up, but not to put any weight on my foot.  I grabbed a washcloth and washed the blood off Derek's face and arms and mine, gave the carpet a half-hearted swipe with the rag and then dragged Derek to bed even though he was not quite through with the bloody nose.  I felt like I was going to pass out and wanted nothing more than to get down the stairs to my bed.  I scooted down the stairs and into my room, gasping for breath because once the adrenaline rush was past, I realized my foot hurt really bad.  

I crawled into bed and then left twice, one for an ice pack and once for ibuprofen.  Matt was not going to be home for two more hours so I figured the best thing to do would be to elevate and wait for him to come home.  I didn't think it was broken and it wasn't sprained.  It was the top of my foot that was hurting so bad.  I couldn't put weight on it and I definitely couldn't move it side to side or curl my toes or anything.  I lay in bed for a good hour, trying to get a handle on the pain before I fell asleep.  I woke with a start about an hour later when I felt a tug on the pillows my foot was resting on.  (I had my foot on Matt's pillow).  I yelled,"No!" and sat up really fast.  Matt was looking at me like I was crazy and I tried to explain what happened but I was too tired to go into details.  

A couple of the kids woke up during the night and I nudged Matt awake because I didn't feel like I could walk up the stairs.  When I woke up this morning, my body was aching!  My knee, foot, hip, arms, etc were all so sore.  I have some awesome bruises, most notably on my foot.  It is pretty swollen and sore with a big lump on the top and outside of my foot.  I can put weight on it and get around with a nice limp and the pain is pretty centralized and the rest of my foot feels fine.  But it still hurts.  

I asked Derek this morning if he remembered what happened last night and he had no clue.  I was hoping he would remember the part where I heroically sacrificed my body for his safety, but no....

Lesson learned:  Don't overestimate your strength when lifting children and when in doubt always take down the baby gate.  Serves me right.