Day 29 - The one with the (likely) broken toe...

I think one thing that is understated about being a stay-at-home parent (re: not just a stay-at-home dad) is that you often reach the point where you're ready for some adult conversation.  It's possible for me to talk to Ellie all day long but she is not good at holding up her end of the conversation.  She largely doesn't stay on the topic being discussed, is easily distracted by shiny or colorful objects, and sometimes just falls asleep while I'm talking to her.  In the immortal words of Stephanie Tanner, "How Rude!"  Overall, I really don't mind staying home with Ellie at all.  It's actually pretty rewarding but there are definitely times where you would love to have an adult conversation of some kind. 

John Stamos can say it too...

Fortunately for me, Ellie and I have been lucky enough to have some visitors stop by to see us over the past couple of days.  My parents swung in yesterday to see Ellie and stayed for a few hours.  She's met them before so no big deal there.  However, today she got to meet a person that should be very near and dear to her heart, my former roommate, Joey.  I had only gotten to hang out with Joey a couple of times since Ellie was born so it was really nice to spend some time eating Jimmy John's and catching up on life.  I do kind of have this fear that I'm going to lose an ability to relate to people in being a stay-at-home dad.  Being able to converse with people well is probably just like anything else; if you don't use it, you lose it.  What's awesome is that Ellie seemed to like Joey quite a bit and didn't even mind it when he held her.

Truth be told, Ellie likely has no strong feelings about Joey one way or the other after one short meeting.  That may just be me being delusional.  Breaking your toe will do that to you.  Probably at this moment, you just found yourself saying "What?".  If not, I'll pause here and give you a chance to do so.  I'll even leave you some elevator music.

Ok, now that you've had plenty of opportunity to process, back to the matter at hand.  Yep, pretty certain that I broke my toe today.  I've always been a little accident-prone.  It probably means that I move too quickly and don't pay enough attention to what I'm doing.  Anyway, while Ellie was asleep in her swing today after Joey left, I spent some time getting things done around the house.  As, I was heading down the stairs from our top level, my jeans leg became caught under my foot (Curse you, Relaxed Boot Cut!).  At this moment, everything slowed down as time came to a halt.  I threw my hands out in an attempt to grab anything I could as my body began ragdolling down our treacherous six step elevation.  As I hit the third step, I saw my middle toe disappear briefly under my left foot before reappearing.

Finding myself sprawled at the bottom of our steps, I picked myself up and prepared to walk.  As I put my left foot down to take my first step, I felt immense pain shooting through my foot.  Quickly laying down on our couch, I proceeded to began poking my toe as a child would poke a dead bird.  Pain continued to radiate from the area which led to intermittent bursts of laughing and howling in pain.  Weird response, I know.  Once I finally built up the courage to climb the stairs again, I taped up my foot, took some ibprofin, and now sit here elevating it watching Ellie snooze away.  She never even awoke despite the bizarre sounds coming from above as her daddy dealt with his pain.  I guess it's a good thing I didn't pass out or Ellie would be on her own.  

I also find myself wondering just how Brett Favre can sling a football around in his Wranglers and I lack the ability to walk down a set of stairs in mine.  What?  Life just isn't fair at all.  #DaddyWrite