Mama Bwoke a Twee Down...

Tuesday morning Coen followed me into my bedroom and noticed a toy train he'd left on our bedside table.  He walked over happily, picked it up and began to scream. For a moment I thought he'd gotten an electric shock from our alarm clock, but when I swooped him up he was grabbing at his neck and when I pulled his little fingers away a squashed wasp fell to the floor.  His pinky and his neck began to swell. And he cried. It was awful.  I held him and snuggled him and he called daddy on my phone.

He said: "Daddy, make you feel better?"  It was heartbreaking.


Things improved when he went down for a nap.  It was his first in days and an extra long one--probably due to all the wasp venom.  He woke up refreshed and the swelling from his stings had subsided.  We all happily went outside to play.

While they played in puddles I walked over to check out a tree.  It had red leaves and pink blossoms and was lovely save for a gnarled, dead branch that looked barely attached.  Yet when I yanked it, to my utter surprise, the whole tree came crashing down.

Someone screamed and I spun around.  Coen, my little shadow, was under the tree.  My heart stopped.

Miraculously he was unscathed save for a few, faint scratches on the side of his face. He stood right in the middle of the canopy but, somehow, the heavier branches had missed him completely.

Pat arrived home from work minutes after it happened while I was still snuggling and consoling the little munchkin.  The tree was lying across the driveway, straddling a plastic flowerpot that marked where Coen had been.  With the little guy crying on my lap it did not take much for Pat to decipher what had happened.  But Coen quickly cleared it up for him anyway:

"Mama bwoke a twee down and it scwatch you!" He sniffled.  "Daddy make you feel better?"

 Yep that's a robin's nest. As though I didn't feel guilty enough! :(