The 2nd most painful day of Trey's life (so far)...

I'm assuming that the day of his birth was more painful.

Perhaps I should have titled this blog - "Fail Fail Fail!" That's how I feel.

Just in case you haven't guessed, I'm still feeling a bit emotional and dramatic over our latest failure as parents. I'm sure we have more failures in our future, being imperfect as we are. However, that reality doesn't change the fact that I feel like poo today.

We can't drink the tap water here. We can't even use it to cook. As a result - we have a water dispenser and we have large water 'tongs' (about 5 gallons of water) delivered to our home. Our dispenser is a little fancy for these parts, because it has the option of hot or cold water. Asians have no use for cold beverages, so we paid extra for the cold water feature.


Anyway - Trey has been becoming increasingly more interested in the water dispenser. He's also getting taller and I suspected that he'd be able to turn on the water. Rob and I had just yesterday decided to move the dispenser after we finished up the latest 'tong' of water. Until then, we were placing a chair in front of the dispenser and keeping the hot water turned off. At least, that's what we did most of the time.

This morning, Rob & I both screwed up. Rob was making oatmeal for Cosi and he forgot to turn the hot water off. I was helping Cosi do a craft and I moved the chair to sit on it. As Cosi was furiously squeezing a tube of glue, I suddenly heard (one foot behind me) the gurgling 'guh-lub guh-lub guh-lub' of water flowing out of the tong. I immediately recognized the noise and hoped it was the cold water side. It wasn't. Poor Trey started screaming as very hot water poured down on him.

In one motion, I grabbed the baby and turned off the water. Then I started running him to the bathroom. Rob was in the other room, but he quickly figured out what had happened from my disjointed and frantic mumblings.

I still didn't know where Trey was burned yet. His face was red, but that could have been from screaming and crying. At the time, it seemed like a good idea to me to shower him all over with cold water. Now, I realize this probably made an already traumatic ordeal even more traumatic for the little guy. And, I also know (now) that his face wasn't burned after all, so maybe I didn't need to shower his head with so much cold water?

As you can imagine, Trey's screams only increased with the addition of the cold water. Thankfully for Trey, Rob soon joined the rescue effort and stopped the full-body cold shower. We wrapped our little boy up in a towel and tried to inspect. He had a red mark on the inside of his right arm and his middle finger on his right hand was also red. The arm now has a blister. Here's a picture of the injury.



















After a two hour nap and some baby tylenol, Trey woke up happy. He is now sporting a gauze bandage and a sock on his right arm. The sock is hidden under the sleeve of an extra-big onesie. This hasn't stopped him from using that arm or hand. You can see Cosi sitting next to him in this picture. She's driving me a bit crazy, because she really really wants to touch Trey's 'boo-boo.' She's also making me laugh, because (not to be shown up) she is also sporting a sock on her arm. Goofball.


















I am still working on calming my self down. (writing this blog is supposed to help me) I would like to say that I am able to calm myself solely through prayer and trust in God. Instead, I'm trying to think of all the worse things that could have happened, like:

-drinking poison - definitely worse!
-getting hit by a car - way worse!
-baby cocaine overdose - never heard of it, but sounds bad!

Ah, yes....maybe a blistered burn isn't so bad after all... It's all about perspective...