IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN

We're back tonight from out first trip to the emergency room with Will. Now before anyone gets too worried, let's skip to the end of the story: Will is fine. He was discharged from the hospital without receiving any treatment other than some antibiotics.

But there were a few scary moments. It started when Will was brushing his teeth before going to bed. He tripped on the little footstool he stands on and cut the inside of his mouth. I was at work when this happened, but Julie says he was bleeding pretty badly from the mouth.

So when things calm down, Julie checks the Internet and talks to some people and eventually has a nurse friend of ours come by to take a look at Will. Soon afterwards, I arrive home and find a perfectly happy Will sitting on the couch watching Pixar cartoons.

But the nurse on the phone and the nurse in our house say the gash in his mouth is pretty big and probably needs stitches. The decision was made to take Will to the hospital. So Julie drives Will to the emergency room, I drive back to work to put together a shortened version of my news story for that night, and Ronnie (God bless that woman) stayed home with Nate.

One hour later I was walking through he hospital parking lot towards the emergency room. I've been the father of two boys for just over two years and the thought occurs to me that this may be a walk I'll be making many times over the next 16 years.

The hospital staff takes me to a room and opens the door and I see Will jumping on the bed and trying to play with all the knobs that complicated piece of equipment. He's fine, and a few minutes later a doctor comes in and says we were right to have the little guy checked out by a doctor, but he'll need some rest and some antibiotics to prevent the cut from getting infected.

Moments later we got our discharge paperwork and we were headed back to the car. Will seemed to treat the whole thing like an adventure where he got to stay up way past his bedtime. His parent's are just happy the whole incident wasn't really much of an adventure.

I've given Will permission to sleep in tomorrow. I hope he does.