Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

A note from Mommy:

Tonight just moments before Michelle showed up for her shift, Peyton decided to head down stairs to talk Travis into letting her ride her bike in the living room.  I was upstairs sitting on the floor of her room. 

A few seconds after she left the room I heard the sound that needs no explanation - a small body tumbling down the stairs and hitting steps along the way.  I was steps away from the top of the stairs and Travis just steps away from the bottom of the stairs.  We both arrived at the same time and there was Peyton sprawled at the bottom of the stairs.  I knew from what I had heard that she fell the entire 15 steps. 

She had been up and down the stairs 10+ times that day.  I remember just days earlier thinking to myself that it's pretty amazing she had never fallen down our stairs.  Now the picture above is not our actual stair case but it is pretty similar with the exception that ours actually has a hand rail (which Peyton rarely uses).  When we lived in California we were in a rambler so Peyton had no opportunity to practice on stairs. So when we moved into this house in June of last year it was a concern - espescially since we have three levels and two of those staircases are very steep.

I ran down to scoop her up and she cried for no more than a minute.  I asked if she was hurt and she pointed to the back of her head and her right arm.  A little more than 24 hours earlier, Dr Morales had warned us that her jaw was still fragile and now she's just fallen down a flight of stairs!  Thinking about it later, though, it was probably a stroke of luck that it happened after the hardware was removed or there is a good chance they would have caught on the carpet and really done some damage.

Peyton dusted herself off and proceeded to ask Daddy about riding her bike and Michelle arrived moments later.  Michelle checked her out as well but couldn't find anything concerning and assured me that had she broken her jaw we would know it.

As I reflected on how terrifying the fall down the stairs was, I recalled that just days after we stopped turning with her first jaw distraction, Peyton rolled off the changing table and landed on her face.  So just warning you all now that next time she has a jaw distraction we will plan on keeping her in a bubble.