The Spill

I've been horrible about posting just random things that have happened, so I am going to try to do better with that, starting with poor Gabe and his fall. Gabe has had 60 dollars since Christmas, and has not been able to part with it the many times he's asked to go look at toy stores. This is actually major progress for him! He is our boy who, in the past, has been all about getting money and spending it right away. We had concerns that he was too materialistic, not finding contentment in the things he already had, etc. You get the picture:) Anyway, for him to keep that money for 5 months because he didn't really see anything he loved and he was happy with what he already had is literally an answer to prayer. A few weeks back, he finally spent the money on a ripstick (kind of like a skateboard, but with only two wheels and there is a lot more balancing involved). He was pretty slow at first, so I wasn't too concerned about a helmet on our flat blacktop on campus. However, he quickly got better...good enough to take a nasty fall, which resulted in him slamming the back of his head against the blacktop, without a helmet. He came in, really calmly and quietly, and said, "I fell off my ripstick. I might be bleeding." I think he was pretty shaken up. I looked and found a lot of blood on the back of his head. I asked him if anything else hurt, and he said his back and elbow kind of hurt, too. I lifted up his shirt and found all kinds of bruises and bad abrasions up and down his back and buns, and a pretty banged up elbow. I said, "Wow, you're pretty tough. Why aren't you crying? I would be." He said, "I don't know" and his eyes got just a little teary. He hopped in the shower to rinse off the blood (it was hard for me to see how bad the head injury was with all the matted down bloody hair). He got out and said he felt like he was going to throw up and that his body felt like he needed to sit down. He never did throw up and we made him take a break for a few days to recover. Now he is the only kid out there who ever wears a helmet when ripsticking...lesson learned the hard way, for both of us. Someday he can read these old blog entries and make his children wear helmets:)