For the second Thanksgiving in a row, my toddler daughter fell off a chair and injured herself almost necessitating a visit to the emergency room.  Falling out of chairs isn’t at all unusual for her, all last year she was falling out of chairs several times a week, but would always catch herself so she would get a bump and cry but no injury.  I was actually starting to be concerned that she had a neurological problem and/or a pathological need to test the limits of gravity.

Last year, just as we sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner for 16 people that I and several others spent all day cooking, my daughter fell out of the chair and SMACK on the ground, she started screaming and holding her arm strangely.  I thought she may have broken it, and screamed at my poor mother-in-law (who was having a conversation with someone else) to tell me where the nearest hospital was (more than an hour away), the result of which, on top of all the holiday stress the poor woman already experiences, caused her to burst into tears along with my daughter who as it turned out, didn’t have a broken arm, just a sore one.

This year, the night before Thanksgiving, my daughter fell out of my mother-in-law’s recliner, SMACK on her FACE.  She cut both lips, blood everywhere.  I thought she may have knocked a tooth out because I couldn’t see in her mouth very well.  We cleaned her up, she cried for an hour, her lips swelled up like Angelina Jolie on collagen, but they stopped bleeding and all her teeth were accounted for; she ran around chasing the dog shortly thereafter.  I, however, needed more than my share of holiday liquor that night.

Next year she is only sitting in bean bags.