Adventures with Blood

I fear this is only my first post of many about blood.

Check out this sequence of pictures for a hint of Elliott's exploring nature:

Here is his sweet smile to me after pulling this infant bouncy seat next to the window.



And here he is in action. He was bouncing all over the place while he climbed up but it didn't slow him down at all.


And within seconds he was standing on the bouncy seat with his feet not touching solid ground at all. He was quite delighted with his accomplishment.




This adventure ended without incident. However, a few days ago, we had an incident.

There was blood. Lots of blood.

He was standing holding onto a metal futon style chair. I was sitting right next to him just in case. Well, my just-in-case position wasn't good enough. Jason walked in and Elliott flung himself in pure excitement and hit his chin on the metal chair. At least that's what we think he hit. All we saw was mouthfuls of blood pouring out. He was screaming and we couldn't see what was bleeding (a tooth? split gum? tongue?) so we jumped into our van to head to the walk in clinic.

The bleeding stopped along the way but we thought it would be wise to get him checked out anyway. We discovered he bit his tongue pretty hard. With the help of hydrogen peroxide, Tylenol and time, he has healed up very nicely. No stitches at all.

Lessons learned from this first adventure with blood:

1. Babies are unpredictable (you would've thought I would've learned this one already)

2. Metal chairs are hard.

3. Soak your clothes in cold water to remove blood stains.

4. Even if the bleeding has stopped, walk into the clinic or hospital holding the blood-soaked towel. This will help you get into triage right away.

Hopefully we won't have many more adventures with blood. But as my sister-in-law reminded me, we did name him Elliott Ray with the initials "ER". Oh well.

We stole a van

It's true. We stole a van yesterday. And I feel a little tiny bit bad about it, but not too much. I really love the van. Here I am in it:




Let me explain.

We have been in the market to buy a used van to accommodate the stuff we have to cart around with Elliott. During the last month, my sweet husband has spent countless hours scanning the used auto ads on craigslist. I have to admit that it crossed my mind a few times that he was just wasting time. But that is just not so.

His hard work and diligence paid off. Big time.

Yesterday, he noticed a 1996 Honda Odyssey with only 88,000 miles for $4300 go up on Craigslist. It is the top of the line model with all the bells & whistles and the guy was selling because Microsoft was transferring him overseas. The seller wanted to get rid of it quickly because he was leaving at the end of this week, and he knew he had priced it low. The ad showed us the Kelly Blue Book value at $5500 so this was quite a deal.

Jason got that gut feeling that this was "the one" that we had been waiting for. So he called around noon (within one hour of the original posting) and found out that someone else had already called and was planning on looking at the van at 2:00 pm.

So we jumped in our car and hurried to beat the other guy there.
First come, first serve, right?

We arrived at 1:10 and I knew immediately that we'd be buying it. It was in excellent condition and it is the smaller model (seats 6) so I found it easier to drive than the full sized mini vans. I hurried on the test drive because, after all, we had to close the deal before the other guy arrived. At 1:30 pm, after the test drive, we offered the asking price and the van was OURS!

The seller called the other guy and said that the van had already been sold. And then I felt a little bad, but like I said before, not that bad. Jason rationalized that it was probably a dealership anyway who noticed how underpriced the vehicle was and planned to resell it at a higher price.

So yes, we stole a van from someone else. You just gotta be quick to get the deals on Craigslist.