She flies through the air with the greatest of ease...it's the landing that's the problem.

A little over a year ago, I posted some photos on the blog of my kids playing on their favorite playground. It had been around since the sixties, and was a landmark in our community. A friend commented at the time that it was actually pretty neat that we still had a playground you could still break bones on, meaning that all of the newer ones are so plastic and sterile. I thought so, too.
A few months later, the old playground failed an inspection and was torn down. We were sad to see it go.

This week, the new "safe" playground was unveiled, and I took the kids to check it out on Saturday. It has a pretty cool treehouse theme, twisty slides, shiny new swings, and a huge sandbox. It is also very plastic and sterile. (See? Completely safe. Katie is about to knock that girl off of the top rung, just wait.)

It was all loads of fun, until Grace climbed up to a high "treehouse" platform with a hole in the middle for a ladder, forgot the hole was there, and as she was playing, took a step backwards straight down into the hole.

When I got to her, she was dangling upside down with her legs tangled up in the rungs of the ladder at sickening angles, and she was screaming hysterically. Somehow, by the grace of God, she fell head first without hitting her head and twisted her legs all akimbo without even bruising them. Her wrist, however, is broken.

So this week we'll be taking a trip to the pediatric orthopaedist, getting a (hopefully pink) cast, and rearranging plans for the first part of summer to exclude swimming. All the while I will continue to ponder why my most cautious child is the one with the most trips to the ER, and shudder while thinking of how it could have been much, much worse.