saying goodbye to '09

i have to say, i am not too sorry to say good bye to 2009. its been a painful crawl to the end of the year. m. has really been impulsive lately. when his therapist first mentioned her concerns about him being impulsive, i think i sort of half listened. mostly what i heard was this is a way to get him into school with k., so i went with it. but last night, when the third catastrophe in one week occured i had second thoughts.

we were at a party with good friends last night and suddenly from the other room i heard that gut wrenching cry that makes all mothers stop dead in their tracks. unfortunately for me, i knew that cry all to well. upon investigating, i discovered that m. had fallen and hit his head pretty hard on something (turns out he made contact with the coffee table after tripping over a fallen friend). soo hard, in fact, that he had an indentation from the impact. my first thought was please do not let us have to go to the ER again this week! honestly, i wasnt sure i would walk out of the ER without having been interviewed by child services. on christmas eve m. managed to set a fire in his bedroom with a trick involving electricity and a common bed pillow that would make even macgyver jealous.

two days after christmas we visited the ER after m. pulled a large bench down on his head. we are still trying to figure out how he managed that. thankfully i have a wonderful neighbor who came and sat with the other boys while j. and i took m. to the hospital. as it turned out it was a clean gash that glued together again nicely. of course he was rewarded for his good behavior by getting a giant popsicle at 10pm from the nurse. every morning since then he wakes up and says "hey mommy, what are we doing today?" i reply' "i dont know m., what do you want to do today?" and he says "lets go to the doctors for popsicles!!" and then at some point later that day it is likely that i will discuss with j. if his latest antic is worthy of that visit to said dr. after all.

which leads us to the indentation in his head last night. you know its a bad goose egg when a mom of triplets says "oh my, i have never seen a bump that bad!"

all this is to say, i am actually really starting to worry about just how impulsive m. is and what lies ahead for him. so as i say goodbye to '09 i am resolving to try to stay one step ahead of all of my kids this year, without being a helicopter mom. and as i ring in twentyten with girlfriends next weekend on an overnight trip to national harbor in DC i can only hope that i wont get a phone call that involves details about any sort of emergency room visit, bloodshed or fire starting.