Aziz stated it best on my Facebook update:

“With great power comes great responsibility, as my uncle used to say. Also, sometimes a little damage. He looks so brave!”

Sunday we spent the morning at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival with Daryoosh and Yago (and their parents). No calamities there, despite zip lining on fake horses and camel rides. There was a great deal of dirt, sweat, rain sprinkles, and sunscreen that made a nice cakey mixture for the afternoon’s events.

When we got home, Mara was out cold and Thane was wired on chocolate covered frozen cheesecake. We convinced him to nap with daddy while Mommy started on the birthday favors for his party and watched “The American President,” one of my all time favorite movies. Five party favor boxes assembled and three quarters of the movie in (yes, they are that labor intensive, the kids better love them), Thane was awake. I managed to pack away the favors with him only swiping one.

Mara woke up shortly after and I decided it was time for Jay to wake up too. If everyone is awake then EVERYONE should be awake and we had things to get done before the stores closed.

While I was upstairs, Thane, in his Spiderman costume, was playing downstairs. Imagine the old spiderman comics.

There were 3 sounds: A Ball bouncing, A Kapow, A Loud Cry.

Jay, usually the more stoic of the two, said: “That sounded bad.” I disagreed and meandered down the stairs. I picked Thane up to see bright red blood gushing above his eyebrow. GUSHING.

I screamed for Jay who immediately freaked out. The two of us were on a screaming Thane and it was almost impossible to see the wound, blood was everywhere and he would not sit still. Jay quickly determined that it needed to be seen, maybe needing stitches.

We informed Thane we were going to the hospital. Even in pain, Thane is fast. Normally ok with doctors, he freaked and refused to be caught. Jay tried calmly explaining the situation and why this would not hurt but would make him feel better. No dice. We finally just got him in the car, and Jay stayed behind with Mara (no sense getting kids sick for no reason).

I never realized how long it takes to get to Vanderbilt Children’s from Franklin.

By the time we arrived, I had Thane pretty calmed down and eager to go in to see the trains. The waiting room looked pretty quiet and it honestly took me longer to check in behind the grandmother who did not know which of the umpteen grandchildren she had in her hand than it did to wait.

Without even being seen, they put some numbing agent on his wound and shortly after that we went upstairs. Here we are in the waiting room upstairs. This is almost an hour after the initial accident.

During that time, I reached Uncle Jim who told me to insist on plastics for the job. I did. After a (very small) song and dance about how they do this all the time, it was not that big, plastics would take awhile to arrive (which they would not quantify), we were sent back downstairs. I thought that meant the waiting room again but instead we were given a room. A Plastics resident showed up very quickly and assessed that one or two stitches would be best. I was very impressed with him and he kept me informed the entire way. There seemed to be other minor things that happened but eventually we got more numbing medicine and had to wait that out another 40 minutes.

Just before they were going to do it, “Child Life” was called in. OK, when you are in a hospital, that is probably the last thing you want to hear. I had no clue what this was and was a little irritated that we were waiting for them instead of just going through with the stitches. Boy, was I wrong.

Child Life arrived with a bag of goodies to “talk a kitten out of a tree” as they said. She got Thane on the bed (which I could barely do) and took out a doll with a cut above her eye, just like Thane’s. Thane then got to give her the numbing nose medicine (in exactly the same type syringe), clean her, and suture her. He then could ask questions. I was in awe. I wish I had taken video. He asked to do it all again, which she let him.

When they gave him the nose meds, he barely fussed and did the big inhales Erin (Child Life) taught him. He did spit them out a little but that was okay. Erin then had him lie down and brought out Thane’s favorite toy, an iPad. Wow. He was in heaven. They played games while the meds took effect.

This is the look of a very loopy boy playing with a robot.

Once he seemed “drunk” enough, the stitching began. They did two stitches. Thane felt nothing on the first one. He was so into the iPad, prepped by Erin’s talk, and numb from the meds that he just kept playing while I rubbed his elbow and watched. He jumped as the second one went in but we don’t know if that was the game or feeling something because he never twitched again.

Here is the before…

And here is the after…

I am pretty impressed with the job they did. There will be some minimal scarring but it could not be helped. And, as his nouna said, scars are cool.

After it was done, he got a green Popsicle. He was pretty happy.

We waited out his meds a little but I still had to carry him from hospital to car because loopy boy could barely walk two steps without falling. I could not fulfill the promise of a Target toy of his choice last night, so we will be heading there tonight.

He was very brave throughout it all.

Since before Christmas, Thane has loved everything space related. At Christmas, GiaGia and I, I mean Santa, bought him a space shuttle and launch pad and Aunt Kellie and Uncle Adam completed it with all of the moon accessories. He loves these (if interested, they are part of the Imaginext Space Series and great toys). Thane’s upcoming birthday party them is Space, so I had a few motives with a side trip during our ride home from Florida:

1. Stop at the Kennedy Space center to further feed his space obsession
2. See a shuttle before the upcoming last launch
3. Get a pic for his birthday party invitation

Getting there was a different story. I think we took the wrong exit off of I95 because it took us about 30 minutes to make it to actual Cape Canaveral. Love GPS, but sometimes it just gets you there, not gets you there the right way. However, before we even made it out of the car, we were hit with some awesome sights that had the kids pointing and not noticing the slight drizzle coming down on us.

We were really impressed with the place and it was worth the steep admission. We did not take the trip to the shuttle for time constraints, rain, and weighing what the kids would actually enjoy. Instead we toured the main park and retired shuttles/demos.

When I was in high school, I spent my summers working at the Science and Technology Museum as a Tour Guide. I got to talk all about the Canadarm (the best known piece of Canadian space hardware) so I always get excited to see it in person.

We did get to one exhibit that Thane was just a little too small for but he thought it was pretty cool to stand next to an astronaut.

Oh and, yeah, we did get that birthday invite shot….

Much to our surprise last year, Mara threw a fit when she went on the boat. She would not get out of our arms and even then she still cried and cried. Uncle Jim and I were on a mission not to have a repeat performance this year. I talked to her about and showed her the boat non-stop, oohing and aahing over it. Uncle Jim ran out and bought her a smaller sized life jacket, complete with a purple Tinkerbell. She loved her new ensemble..swim suit, purple life vest, and hat. Fierce!

(Thane also got a new Lightning McQueen Life Vest)

Right before we got on the boat, she decided no. Then we all went on and handed her over the dock. She got on and immediately started exploring. Jay and Uncle Jim lowered the lift to the water and it was all we could do to keep her in one place on the boat.

As a new twist this year, Thane got to steer the boat. He loved that and stood proudly with Uncle Jim while he “drove” us across the water. He was quite adept at it and decided he could take it to the next step. Right as we were maneuvering out from under a bridge, the boat came to a sudden standstill, with a very large yacht right behind us. Jay quickly realized that Captain Thane had decided to TURN OFF both engines…at the same time no less! Luckily we started up again and Uncle Jim took over the reigns for a little bit.

Boca Lake was our destination and we moored there for a bit. I had not worn my suit but Jay quickly dove in. While he was swimming around, the boat next to us started yelling “Shark! Shark!” I looked around but did not see anything and figured Jay had enough life insurance anyway, so we would be okay. OK, so maybe I did not think it that way but for whatever reason I chose NOT to say anything to Jay until we were talking about the trip from the safety of our home in Nashville and he said he heard the same thing but also heard the guys laughing about their joke. (Yeah, I heard them laugh too, it had nothing to do with the life insurance, really.)

We asked Thane if we wanted to go in but he said he was good. Mara decided she wanted in too (ok, all kidding aside, there were no sharks) so we handed her over to Jay and she splashed around with a huge grin. She protested immensely when it was time to get out.

We eventually convinced Thane to try the water. He did but not with the wild abandon of his sister (note the rigid legs).

He did enjoy himself though, much to his chagrin. He was quite happy to come back out of the water though and start being captain again.

We stayed there quite a while. Some new boating neighbors next to us offered us some pizza, which made us all realize we were hungry. We headed back in the boat and headed off to my favorite form of travel, taking the boat not the car to dinner. Finding a spot is a bit more of a challenge but one boat was pulling out just as we were getting so we were in luck.

Mara was apparently quite famished when we arrived. She quickly perused the menu and decided that she and Thane would share the fish and chips.

Last year’s boat ride lasted less than 30 minutes. This year we were on the water for 3 hours, cruising back at night and watching the houses light up from the Intercoastal. Our Mara might be a sailor yet!