Thursday, October 15

nursery duties

Here is the culprit.



Towards the end of August I took on the position of Nursery Coordinator at church. That means I'm officially in charge of making sure the Infant, Crawler and Toddler rooms are fully stocked with supplies and staff every Sunday, all three services. Getting them full of kids hasn't been a problem.

A few Sundays ago, the toddler room was especially full (think 14 walkers under the age of 2 with only 3 helpers) so I was checking in to make sure everyone was doing alright. One of the workers came to me with a half chewed name tag (we have name tags and pager numbers that get pinned to the back of every child). "I don't know how she got it off, but now I can't find the safety pin." We pinned a fresh one on the little gummer (my word for toddlers that munch on things until they're a gummy paste) and I helped look around the room a bit, but was quickly distracted with another duty and forgot all about it.

Fast forward to the wee hours of Monday morning. All of a sudden I'm wide awake in bed and all I can think is: "Oh no! We never found that pin!" Of course, I feel I'm solely responsible for this as it happened under my watch and immediately start conjuring up worst case scenarios where the gummy child swallowed said pin and is dying slowly somewhere of a punctured something or other. This kept me awake for some time. I eventually drifted back to sleep but when I woke up as M was getting ready for work, I mumbled out something about a pin and should I call the parents, etc. He nicely assured me I shouldn't worry and told me to go back to sleep.

I went about my day, but in the back of my mind I couldn't stop thinking about the safety pin. The buzzer rang on my dryer as I was contemplating what to do. As I opened the door, something fell onto the ground...

YEP, you guessed it! THE SAFETY PIN. I was washing/drying the nursery bibs and the pin must have fallen into one of the pockets on the front of bibs. I have never in my life been so relieved to see a half eaten name tag and safety pin fall out of my dryer. I was now sure that no child from the nursery was dying of a punctured stomach lining and could happily go about my day.

1 comment:

she said...

yeah, this is awesome. see, God knew how responsibly you were worrying about this and chose to literally drop it right under your nose. he's got your number. and aren't we thankful he does!

great story, little miss little!





(word verification: "machet." add an -e to the end of that and we're in business.)