Pick on Devon Day 3

Devon is the guy in the middle there in the pic, taken last week.

Devon has always been a big time climber, an addiction he has no intention of outgrowing as far as I can tell.

When Devon was 2 1/2 we were at a Little Tykes play room in a mall in Virginia and he was climbing up all the fun toys. Well, sure enough, he fell head first off of one of the toys and landed on his head on the stone floor of the mall. (it did have a very thin layer of carpeting over it, but no protection from injuries at all.)
I had little baby Cody to carry, the diaper bags, and Devon who could not even hold his head upright, then try to keep hold of Drew and Kaytlin and get out of the mall. Devon couldn't even hold his head up sitting in the carseat! I was really freaked out. When I got home I couldn't get ahold of Donnie to help me, and bringing all the kids to an ER was not appealing. While I was trying to find a way to go Devon fell asleep. I could not wake him up! I totally freaked out!
I got a neighbor that I didn't know very well to agree to come watch the other kids because I was sure that Devon had a concussion at that point.
I kept trying to wake him up. "Do you wanna pet a puppy? Do you want some ice cream? Candy?" I kept going through the things he loves, nothing, not even a flicker of consciousness. Then, just as I was about to open the door for my neighbor the TV show Land of the Lost came on TV and Devon sat right up, wide awake, to watch it. So, I didn't even take him in, though I am sure he got a concussion.

Then a few years later we built one of those wooden playgrounds for the kids. They loved it and spent hours and hours outside every day. One day I heard the kids freaking out and ran to see what the commotion was all about. Devon was dripping blood! Apparently he had climbed to the top of the playground and fell off, landing on his nose on a 2x4.

I totally freaked again! I put him on the couch with a cold wet cloth for his nose and called Donnie to come home to take him to the hospital for a broken nose. Donnie refused to take him, saying that it was pointless because they can't fix a broken nose. I was so mad! I was crying and yelling at him about what an awful parent he was and on and on..... then I turned around and Devon had taken off to resume his playing.

That was not the end of Devon's falling from high places. The seemed to get progressively higher from there. Three foot play area, 7 foot play ground, and then 12 feet out of a tree.

Devon was up in a tree in our backyard, the tree leaned out back over the fence and over a deep drainage ditch from the Chesapeake Bay. Devon was a mighty climber at this time, at the ripe old age of 5, but the tree gave way. The branch he was standing on had snapped, sending him on a mad dash down to the ground. To save himself he would grab a branch, and it would break, and down he would go, branch after branch. Until there were none left to save him and his brand new white sweatsuit from taking the last 6 foot plunge to the black sludge of the ditch. Need I mention that the black sludge smelled really rotten? And that it was black on his white sweatsuit? Brand new white sweat suit?

I would NOT allow him to go across my entire house to get to the bathroom dripping that black, stinky sludge, so we had to strip him outside and lift him through the bathroom window in order to get him clean. Devon was scratched from the top to the bottom of his torso. But he went back up that same day.