It's funny how the things that seemed to be really irritating earlier this week now seem really, incredibly inconsequential...

It's 4:00 am and I'm in the Pediatric Intensive Care waiting room at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville. My sister and I made a mad dash from Knoxville tonight after finding out that our beloved two year old cousin, slipped away from his mother today and jumped into the lake near his grandparents' house.

He was in the water for several minutes before they found him, and had no pulse for at least twenty minutes. He was lifeflighted from Coffee County to Vandy and is in extremely critical condition. He's on a ventilator and they fear serious brain injury.

He's the sunniest, happiest baby you can imagine and we all love him so much.

Vanderbilt Hospital is very family oriented, so even though I am not his mother, I was able to sit with him some tonight in the ICU, and seeing his blond curls spread out on the hospital bed, still damp from the lake, was just almost more than I could bear. He hasn't woken up at all since they found him, and his mother and father, two of the people dearest to me in the world, look like their souls have just been sucked out of them.

Please keep him in your thoughts. And hug your children.