Hershey Park - 1, Buckey - 0

We went to Hershey Park for the first time on Saturday. Addie decided that she wanted to go to the Boardwalk and swim even though the air temperature was only 70 with a fair wind. Anyway, we packed up all our swimming stuff and headed over. Addie was all about the water despite blue lips, goosebumps and the little bastards hitting us right in the face with the water guns. (That only happened once, I can assure you.) Addie had a great time, as evidenced here:

Buckey wanted almost nothing to do with the water, but finally we convinced him at least to stand around the perimeter of the water, so we could all sort-of be in the same place. They had some beach chairs around the zero-depth water and it appeared that Kiefer was trying to climb onto one just as Chris and I switched duties (he to swim with Addie and me to try and get warm and herd Buckey.) Since the chairs are only 6 inches off the ground and do not fold, I didn't try to stop him. He had both hands on the back of the chair and had just put a knee on the seat when it started to tip in ever-so-slow motion. I stepped over to him just as he hit the ground and uttered a horrendous scream. I was surprised that he was crying so hard, and chalked it up to he a) hated the water and b) hated every place where he could see the water and c) falling down just cemented his resolve to get us the hell out of there.

Anyway, I scooped him up right away with a quick look at his face to make sure he didn't bite his lip or scrape his face. Nope. He put his head into my shoulder and tucked both hands in between us and screamed and screamed and screamed. I decided he really was hurt and so I pulled away from him so I could look him over. He lifted his right hand out from between us and that's when I saw the blood and something white hanging loose.

Oh shit.

Luckily, I am pretty solid in a crisis, so I checked it closely and the result of Buckey's mishap with the sun chair was the complete dislodge of the middle fingernail of his right hand. I don't mean most of was torn away. I don't mean it had bent back and loosened from his nail bed. I mean the entire fingernail was torn out from the root.

Oh shit.

He's still screaming. I wrap his finger in a fold of the towel, quickly walk over and tell Chris that Buckey lost a fingernail and then headed out to the closest First Aid Station. There is a chance that I ran over a few small children on the way.

He screamed like a siren all the way there, but stopped suddenly when he was descended upon by two EMTs and a nurse. They cleaned his finger and wrapped it up while the nurse filed an incident report and before he was done, Buckey was the proud recipient of two cheap stuffed dogs -- one for himself and one for sister. *(On a side note, just to illustrate how completely sweet and adorable is Buckey: He's kind of crying when they're working on him and his finger no doubt hurts like bloody hell. But one of the techs handed him this little stuffed dog and he grabbed it with his free hand, hugged it tight with a sound like, "Awww...", kissed its little nose and patted its back until they were finished working on his finger.)

Here's the First Aid Station we visited. This photo was taken AFTER the incident.

Here's Buckey with one of the first aid pups.

Here's his finger approximately 20 minutes after the incident. I re-wrapped it once we got to the car.

I cannot bring myself to take a picture of his finger the way it looks now. However, it doesn't seem to bother him anymore and today was the first day that he didn't seem to mind it without a bandage.

Here's to hoping that this does not color further interactions between Buckey and Hershey.