originally November 16, 2011

One of my favourite things about having seven children is that only one of them has asthma attacks at 3:30 a.m. that require trips to the emergency room.

Not that I don't like rushing off to emergency in the middle of a really good night's rest.  The story is that all of my children might have had asthma attacks occasionally and I might rarely have a week or month go by without a trip to ER.  So things could be considerably more taxing and inconvenient.  And I might have less time for lying around eating bonbons.

Silas, Chicken Whisperer, rarely complains, so I should have realized that he wasn't getting enough oxygen on Sunday when he was cantankerous and unreasonable.  My very first thought, however, was not...Oh, Silas must not be getting enough oxygen, and therefore is having difficult maintaining his easy going manner...What my first thought was something closer to... what the heck is wrong with you, you profoundly irritating child. 

But fortunately that isn't what I said aloud.  I said something more along the lines of boy we shouldn't have kept you up so late last night.  That was about as charitable as I could manage.  And of course he is not a profoundly irritating child.  He is a good boy who, through no fault of his own, was acting irrationally.   Just like I was.  For the most part, I was able to keep my irrationality inside my brain.  But I am 48 and he is only 11 and I was getting adequate amounts of oxygen to the best of my knowledge. 

Anyway.  The thing I like most about going to the emergency ward is that I don't have to do it very often.  The second best thing I like about it is that I am not in the medical profession.  My job requires me to pop in once in a while, while their job requires them to be there for twelve hours at a stretch.  And deal with sick people. Ew.

Naturally they get paid for this sacrifice they make, and I do not.  But we are splitting hairs, now, really, because you couldn't pay me enough to work in the medical profession and I am grateful that I don't have to do the stuff they do.  Applying bandaids, administering pain relief, providing compresses of frozen peas, fetching and emptying barf buckets are the outer reaches of my medical abilities.

That is one of my favourite things about being a mother. That I don't have to do everything.  Sometimes.

So, I've been waxing on being thankful recently and other than not going to emergency very often, here is a list of some things I’m thankful for.

1.  Children reading aloud to each other
2.  Kind nurses
3.  Bubble baths
4.  Boys asking for hugs