“He’s always fallen asleep twirling my hair,” Vermeesch said. “That’s my job so that when he gets sad I just lean over him so he can twirl my hair.”

Connor, who is 2 1/2 years old, is a patient at Children’s Mercy Hospital where he was taken last Monday night after being injured by a lawnmower.

To get their house ready for a Realtor to show it the next day, Christy and Shad Vermeesch were both mowing the lawn — Shad with a push mower and Christy with the riding mower. When a babysitter went in the house to get a drink for the children, Connor apparently decided to follow his parents.

“I’d just finished mowing the back yard and went to the front yard and had just turned around a little evergreen tree,” Christy said. “I backed up and he was there.”

Christy still doesn’t know how Connor ended up in the way of the mower.

“I kind of wonder if I backed into him and he fell down from that and he just went under,” she said.

And Connor, who is a proficient talker, hasn’t said yet.

“The morning after the accident when he woke up, he just said he got a bad owie,” Christy said.

The blades of the mower cut off Connor’s four smaller toes on his right foot and left the big toe barely hanging. Since then, that toe had to be surgically removed.

But fortunately, Christy said, the growth plates in Connor’s foot were not harmed. So, if the foot can be repaired, albeit without the toes, it will still grow to its normal adult length. His surgeon plans to replace the end of the foot using muscle material from Connor’s abdomen and covering that with skin from his thigh.

Connor has a good prognosis, particularly because he’s so young, Christy said. When Connor goes home from the hospital, he’ll have a walking cast to help him keep up with his siblings, 9-year-old Payton and 6-year-old Madelyn.

Christy sighs when she looks back on the first five months of 2003, a year she describes as “crazy.”

On Jan. 9, the Vermeesch family’s dream house — one they expected to move into by March — burned to the ground. Early indications were that a propane heater that workers left on inside the house ignited the blaze.

The house has since been rebuilt and the family was planning to move in by the end of May. They still will, but with Connor’s injury, things just won’t be the same.

However, Christy’s just thankful things weren’t worse.

“It’s a terrible thing,” she said. “But it will end up fine and he’ll be able to run and jump and play.”