An amundo that is lawful and right

So the morning of the 16th, Ryan said the sweetest thing when I went in to get him:
"Good morning, Daddy."

An awful lot of sweet stuff has happened since.
I'll never get caught up with everything, so I'll hit the high points:
Suffice it to say that I've needed to update both my profile and W2 withholding status thanks to our daughter finally (a whole 16 hours past her due date!) arriving. With every day passing, and Christmas just around the corner, we were starting to plan for Holiday-centrically-appropriate names. Our favorites:

1. Holly
2. Joy
3. Noel
4. Egg Nog

But saner heads prevailed, and we named her Erin Leigha (rhymes with onomatopoeia, not heyiwannalaya). She is a wee little sprite, 7 lbs of lips and legs, with the most adorable little throaty cry. Unlike the screecher that joined us in the other half of the room our last night. Yeesh. Melted the WWII paint off the walls.

Thank God for the Grandparents, who did a remarkable job taking care of all of us; making meals, fixing the house (with me dutifully holding the ladder and shining the flashlight), hanging out on the floor keeping Ryan occupied. Doubly necessary, since I got a terrible cold the weekend before Christmas. Started with a sore throat, turned into an extremely pissed off throat, a chest thing, and fever that had me sent to bed after dinner on Christmas Eve and without a great singing voice for most of Christmas Day. I'm still getting over the cough, but have romantically passed my crud on to my wife who, going on upwards of seventeen minutes of sleep a day, certainly does not need any help feeling like crap.

Then it was Ryan's turn. He slipped on a hardwood floor Christmas night, banging his head on some steps. No blood, no loss of consciousness, just a little boy bumped his head. But for the next few days, sometimes when we'd lie him down in the crib, or on to his back for a diaper change, he'd grab at his ear and whine. Yesterday morning, he awoke asking for Mommy at 2:15am, and when I picked him up, he said, "Ear Hurt."
I took him to the clinic at 11:30 to make sure his ear drum wasn't damaged, or something else affecting his equilibrium, and the doc found dark dried blood deep in his ear. She said their x-rays wouldn't catch anything, so she conferred and sent us up to Ft Belvoir to get a CT Scan. Typical ER, got there at 1, wasn't seen until 3:30. Right during Ryan's nap time. But he was a trooper, playing with me, singing songs, rifling through everything in the diaper/toy/snack bag (which wasn't much). Finally the doctor came in and said he couldn't really see any blood, that a CT Scan probably wasn't necessary, since Ryan's demeanor and otherwise health (eating, drinking, sleeping, balance, color remembrance) has been great since the incident, and when I tried to show the doctor how he acted when I laid him down, he didn't do anything.
Ryan, does your ear hurt? I asked.
"Yes."
Ryan, does your nose hurt?
"Yes."
Uh-huh.
He's fine. So we'd be home in time for tea.
Only he brought in another doctor for a second opinion, who said, yes there's blood in there, see? Since ENT would want an audiology test to confirm he's okay, and for that they'd want a CT scan, may as well get it now.
Ryan! Want to sleep in a tube?
"...yis?"
Ryan was so good with the docs sticking scopes in his ear, we thought we might try the scan without having to sedate him like they usually do kids his age. I carried him in, showed him the big doughnut, looked like a rabbit hole, "Hellooooo, Rabbit!" So we said hello to all the Winnie the Pooh characters. I showed him the back, stuck my hand through the hole (about a yard wide and only about a foot deep, not a coffin like an MRI. They put him down with his head in a brace, with two nerf squares stuffed in to keep him steady. He looked left and right, but was doing okay. Lead blanket on his belly, another one over me so I could be right next to him, the lady asked him to close his eyes while they centered the laser on his noggin. They cranked up the machine, and the circle started to spin around, and he started to cry, saying his pathetic "No thenk you! No thenk you!" over and over. I held his hand, then both to keep them away from his face, and then the lady suggested he close his eyes again while the machine restarted, and that seemed to lull him into security, keeping his eyes tightly closed. After less than a minute, they were done. Such a good boy!
20 minutes later, the doctor came in and said there was a hairline fracture in some bone beginning with an 'm' behind his ear. So we would have to drive to Walter Reed to see the ENT experts right away (before the holiday weekend, get this taken care of), would I like to drive or take the ambulance.
Sheesh.
Ryan finally fell asleep for the last thirty minutes in the hour-long rush hour traffic ride up around to Maryland and back down into Northern DC. An ER doctor had to get in his face again and stick probes in his ear, then send us up to the 6th floor ENT guys to make sure his facial nerves were okay. (Ft Belvoir docs couldn't ask him to smile and blink??) But I got to see the CT Scan and the lil' millimeter smudge behind his ear canal, that showed the break in an innocuous spot, far away from the well protected important stuff. Nothing further needed, just come back in a few weeks to ensure the blood has broken down and flushed away.
We had a Subway sandwich in the lobby while finally reassuring his mother that he was okay, then sang songs and babbled all the way home to keep him awake before bedtime. Ten hours, three hospitals, two diapers.
Then Erin slept on my chest until 1:10am while we let her mother get a couple hours (straight!) of sleep.
Daddy needs a nap.