The dreaded picture day

I positively loathe taking family pictures, so much so, that it's surprising I don't break out into hives come picture day.  Since Cameron has been born, I don't believe we've ever gotten through a photo session unscathed & without a million meltdowns.  The kids must sense that I really want them to cooperate so they prey on my weakness & the experience is a disaster!

When the morning began like this, I should have known it was time to abort the idea of family photos, but no, I just had to press on.  We were dressed & our hair had been brushed after all... we were in too deep to turn back.

While we scouted out a spot, Cam took the opportunity to run around the pond so that Mike was forced to navigate across this little dam.  I totally envisioned them both falling into the water & Lauren was fully ready to capture the moment with our camera!

Luckily that did not happen.  Disaster #1 had been avoided.

We had planned for Lauren to take our picture & us to take one of her & Tay so we could all get a jump on Christmas cards.  That meant that we were dealing with three uncooperative stinkers!  Taylor loved photo bombing us as Lauren tried to get a decent shot!  She must know just how cute she is!

After a few stressful minutes of trying & hoping to get at least one usable shot, we switched turns & now Mike was getting ready to take their picture as I attempted to get Tay to smile & look at the camera.  Again, Cameron preyed on the fact that we were a bit distracted & ran wild as he so loves doing.

Although I told him to stay away from the tangles of trees & branches dozens of times, he continued to head in that direction with his little sidekick Reese in tow.  A head turn away & two seconds later & I find him in the branches, covering his right eye.  I immediately panicked inside even though he wasn't crying.  Fast forward to me asking him what happened & he starts hysterically crying saying that his eye hurt.  He would not take his hand away from his eye so I wasn't able to assess the damage.  We headed straight home & got him settled into a dark room, distracted by SpongeBob.  This all happened before 9am on a Sunday morning, so of course there were no optical places open.  Mike suggested the ER but since I work in the hospital, I knew there was little they could do to help him since needed to see an eye doctor ASAP.  After nearly three hours of anxiety & worry we finally, finally got a call back from a doctor.  I immediately jumped in my car & met an ophthalmologist at his office before they opened for the day; I was so incredibly thankful that he was willing to go in early just to see us.

On the way to the office, Cam passed out in the backseat with sunglasses on & a blanket over his face.  It was truly pathetic.  Watching your child in agonizing pain & not being able to do anything about it is an unbelievably helpless feeling.  It makes my heart break for parents that watch their child battle a serious illness.  

After the doctor put numbing drops in Cam's eye, he was able to examine him & the second he looked at his eye, he said, "ouch, this is a really bad corneal abrasion."  The doctor couldn't believe how tough Cam was being since it's supposedly extremely painful.  My poor baby is such a trooper!!  He put a lens in Cam's eye to alleviate the pain & allow it to heal since each time he would blink, it was like rubbing an open wound.  He also told us that it would take his pain level from a 10/10 to a 3/10.  We left with antibiotic & anti-inflammatory eye drops in hand.  Mike stayed home with him today & took him back to the same doctor so they could test him with the lens off.  His eye is 75% healed but he had to have the lens put back in because there was still some discomfort.  We'll go back tomorrow & the doctor said there would be only a 1 in 20 chance that he would need it back in, so I'm hopeful that we'll be lens free as of tomorrow.  I am praising God that Cam's eye wasn't permanently damaged & for the awesome doctor who helped us!

By the time I was pulling in from the doctor, my friends we were having over that afternoon were arriving.  Amongst the chaos, I came into the house to find Reese saying, "I have poop!"  Since she started teething with her second molars, she's been having an on/off diaper rash that comes completely out of the blue.  I opened her diaper & it looked like the poor thing was burned by acid, it was horrible!!!  She screamed in pain, her legs shaking as I tried to clean her up with a warm washcloth & load her with ointment.  By the time I eventually calmed her & got her down for a nap, I was a shaky, nervous wreck from the stressful day!  Again, praise the Lord because her rash had gotten so much better by the time she was up from her nap.  Last night I nearly kissed my comfy bed as I crawled in before nine o' clock... yesterday seriously kicked my butt.  I think I'll forever be traumatized by family picture day!!!