Split Seconds

Ever had one of those weeks where your kids both have miserable colds which causes them to be a) miserable and b) almost insufferable, your husband works late every night and then you get in a car accident at the end of the week?

Maybe just me, then.

Luckily, the colds have cleared up slightly (except poor Dash is still kind of a mess), my husband always comes home and the car will be fixed and our injuries were pretty minor.

Here's what happened, for curious minds:

We were going to my grandma's house to visit her on Saturday morning. It was a gorgeous fall day - clear and sunny - and my grandma has had quite a bit of health setbacks recently, so we thought we'd make the hour long drive to see her.

We were two blocks from her house (my dad also lives there with his wife), and going straight down a residential road. There's a car coming out a side road about to turn left. He's got his nose out and is looking right, down the street to see if he's clear. He's barely clear - there's a car coming - but I think he thought he could probably accelerate and squeeze in front of the car. So, he accelerates out quickly, but the problem is, he doesn't look to his left. Where we were driving down the road.

Peter sees this about to happen, I think. He swerves and honks to try to miss the impending crash, as he judges (accurately, I'm sure) that he doesn't have enough space to brake.

The car accelerates out, tries to turn left, and instead plows directly into the rear passenger side of our car. Smacks the wheel and the passenger door pretty hard. Which is, of course, the door my youngest baby sits next to. We get jostled pretty hard before coming to a stop, but I doubt we were even at a complete stop before I'm out of the car and opening the door to get to my baby as fast as humanly possible.

Here's the thing: when you're in a situation like this, time simultaneously slows way down and speeds way up. It's a split second. Not enough long enough to fully understand what has happened. But plenty of time for your brain to immediately process the fact that your baby, your whole heart, is the closest person in the car to the point of impact. You have no idea how bad the crash was, all you can think is "SHIT" while your heart momentarily stops and the worst case scenario runs through your head - despite the fact that within a split second you have exited the car to get your precious baby into your arms faster than even humanly possible.

I leapt out of the car and snatched my baby out of his carseat, where he was safely sitting. Peter's out of the car and down the street, where he's yelling at the other driver. Ellie's crying to be picked up - poor girl was rightly very scared and has talked about it all week since. (She keeps telling me in her limited vocabulary that she was scared and she wanted to be picked up, but we weren't picking her up because we were busy. Breaks my heart!)

The 16 year old boy who hit us was very apologetic and emotional, and my heart also broke a bit for him. He made a mistake, and I'm pretty sure he'll never make that kind of mistake again.

Bottom line: cars can be repaired, my whiplash seems to be the only injury that's arisen for our family (knock on wood...) and I am incredibly thankful for the fantastic carseats that did their job and protected my babes.

These two.

My whole heart.

car accident means new carseats! What Dash thinks of his!

What Ellie thinks of hers!