Nightmare Day

Yesterday morning (Tuesday) the girls were out riding their bikes. We normally go out there after breakfast and ride unless we are going to the pool that day. My good friend Vivian called, so I was sitting on my front steps watching some kids ride and others sit on the driveway and draw with a new bucket of sidewalk chalk I had just bought.

Hailey, my 7 year old, rode over in front of our house and started making a 360 turn to her right to go back up the street the way she had just come. At that point events start blurring a little. I saw her fall onto her left side, landing on her left hip and leg with the bike landing on top of her. She immediately started screaming. I told Vivian, "Igottagobye," as I started running towards the street, throwing the phone into the grass.

Hailey was screaming in agony, holding her leg. She was screaming things like "It hurts, I think I broke my leg!" I was looking for road rash where she had landed, so I kept trying to look at her left leg, just sure that the skin was all off in a bloody mess. But she was holding her other leg, shaking and screaming. Then I got a look at the leg she was holding. It was obvious something was wrong because of the odd swelling that was already occurring (though thankfully no bones were protruding).

Trying to calm her down so I could get her into the Suburban, I had the other girls get the bike put up while I tried to carry her, scooping her up from the asphalt and somehow getting her into the car. Then I had to get a trash can since she felt like she was going to be sick (I felt a bit like it myself), threw on decent clothes, grabbed my purse and got out the door, being so thankful my oldest child is old enough to keep the kids for a while.

Once we got to the pediatric urgent care clinic and got checked in, they fortunately had a wheelchair. But any movement sent her into spasms of agony. She looked awful too. She was sweaty from the bike riding and the shock, her skin was an odd grey color and clammy, and she had the shakes really bad. She was also in old mismatched clothes she had thrown on to bike ride in, her hair was in a messy ponytail from the bike helmet, and she was in tennis shoes that needed to be thrown away, they were so worn out.

Though we were all fairly sure it was broken, they needed to do x-rays, but just moving her was so painful. They had no IV pain meds at the clinic, but she was so nauseated, they couldn't give her oral pain meds yet. So before we x-rayed her they gave her some anti-nausea medicine. We then managed somehow to get her onto the x-ray table but could not get her leg straightened out. So we had to take the pictures with her knee bent. After the first film, the doctor pulled me aside and showed me the x-ray. It was broken in two places and part of the bone was displaced. She wasn't sure if it would need surgery to put a pin in or not, but it was bad enough they couldn't cast it there. She told me she was probably going to send me to an ER, calling an ambulance to transport her. What she really needed was better films, but she needed to be drugged to do that, and they could do that in the ER and not the clinic.

Then we went back in for another x-ray. After getting her back into the wheelchair, I thought she was going to pass out. When she would look at me crying while this was happening, well, I can't describe the agony and heartbreak I felt. At that point they did give her some pain medicine as the anti-nausea meds had kicked in by that point. Also, the doctor got her an appointment with a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at 1:30 so we wouldn't have to go to the ER. But they did need to splint her first. After that I started making phone calls, including one to Kelly, whom I hadn't really had time to call yet. He immediately left work and came to meet me at the house.

On our way home, I stopped to get Hailey something to eat (mistake #1). Kelly carried her into the house while we made plans for the rest of the day. We then climbed back into the truck to head up to the specialist office. Thinking the worse was behind us, I didn't think about grabbing a trash can. Well, that was a BIG mistake (#2). She got sick on the way, and we had nothing with us. So we had to turn around and head back home and clean her up - without giving her a shower, and clean the truck up somewhat, though not thoroughly since we needed to go. Then we climbed into the Suburban and headed to the specialist.

They got her back and elevated the leg, iced it, and showed us the x-ray. The break was even worse than I had originally been told. Besides the two breaks, there is a long vertical crack from the bottom break all the way down the bone. And there was nothing they could do for a couple of days. They wanted her under general anesthesia to set the bone and cast it, and they couldn't do either until the swelling went down some.

So we are set to take her into an outpatient surgical suite in the morning (Thursday). At this point they don't think they will need a pin, but she will have a hip to foot plaster cast. The nurse ordered us a wheel chair with elevated legs, as she won't be able to get around on crutches in the first cast. They are doing a plaster cast instead of a fiberglass one because of the type of break and the way it needs to be molded - I don't quite understand all the details but the plaster gives him some options the fiberglass doesn't, though she might get a shorter, fiberglass cast in a month to 6 weeks.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get her settled in at home, going to three different pharmacies trying to find one the had her prescription in stock, and trying to clean up the truck. Needless to say, Hailey slept fairly well on drugs, Kelly and I did not.

So for now, even after the cast is on, our downstairs living room will be her bedroom. Our house is not wheelchair friendly, so it is going to be a challenge just getting her around in the next month. So between seeing one of my kids in severe pain, ruining the back seat of our new truck, and dealing with all the logistics for the next month or so, I am feeling quite overwhelmed. I am dreading tomorrow - not the procedure itself, but the amount of pain she will surely be in the rest of the day.

We still aren't exactly sure how she broke the leg. I saw her fall and know she landed on her left side - she has a few scrapes from that. But the top leg is what broke, so we speculate she must have gotten it tangled in the bike frame or slammed it into the frame somehow. And while she has been in more pain than any child should, she has been a trooper. Though I don't know if she'll ever get onto a bike again.

Conversations with a 2 year old

Well, conversation may be a bit of a stretch, but Ashlynn has definitely been jabbering away for quite a while now. And some of her speeches have us rolling in the floor, where as some are very sweet.

In the latter category, the other night she was sitting in my lap while I was watching a sad video on the computer. I was crying, and she kept looking up at me with a very concerned look on her face. Finally, she reached up and rubbed my cheek, and said, "Es wong, Mama?" (What is wrong, Mama, for those of you who don't speak 2-year-old-ish.)

But one of her sayings that has us cracking up every time is the way she says, "Excuse me." She'll bump into someone or try to get past one of us, look up at us completely serious, and say, "Skew me."

Picture taken by Hailey, our 7yo

Now where are my high heels?

We measured Kora this morning since everyone keeps asking if she's as tall as I am yet. That depends on what shoes we are wearing. I am 5'7". As of this morning, Kora is 5' 6.25" - a whole three quarters of an inch shorter than I am, thank you very much. I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts, which won't be much longer. She's grown over an inch since March! And the orthopedic doctor who treated her broken leg last fall said to expect her to keep growing for approximately another 2 years.

I feel short already.

And wasn't it last week when she looked like this?

And now she looks like this:

I'll be the one on the ladder

I am done. Almost. As much as I can be. I have done as much school planning as I can. I have one curriculum set that has not been delivered yet - it's brand new and all I have is the Beta version. Once it gets here, I'll need to make photo copies of the tests and such. But other than that, unless I remember something I forgot to do (if I do, it'll probably be at 4 am) I can move on to other things.

Like painting! I still have paint I bought last year for some projects. But because of my tendon injury I did zero painting last summer. The summer of '08 I painted 3 bedrooms and a hallway with a newborn in the house! But last year, zip, nada, nothing. Hopefully I can remedy that this year.

I've also been stumped as to how to paint our stairwell, which needs it badly. But it's two stories tall, for Pete's sake. (Anyone know who Pete is?) Then I ran across this and even though I am a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to heights, I'm gonna give it a try.

You know what the hardest thing about painting is? That I never want to stop at painting. While I'm at it, I want to put in new light fixtures, and maybe new drapes, which would need new curtain rods. Or maybe the shower curtain needs to be replaced which would require new towels, toothbrush holders, trashcans... This is definitely not a new phenomenon for me, so I know I need to watch it. If you know of any cures, let me know. I'll be the one sitting on the couch watching HGTV.

This is so true!

OK, my husband sent me the funniest Dilbert ever this morning, but I can't figure out a way to post the whole thing in this post - part of it gets cut off. But if you work on computers or know someone who does, click here and get your laugh for the day.

Biking

I am happy to report that I can take back what I said about helping kids learn to ride a bike being in the same category as potty training and phonics. Brynna and Hailey both took off this week. Hailey doesn't need me at all. Brynna, who is our most un-athletic child (is un-athletic a word?), rides just fine. She's still working on the taking off part. And the stopping part still needs some work too, especially when a curb is coming up. She scored our first major crash of the summer this morning by playing chicken with the sidewalk curb. The curb won.

Ketchup

You can always tell when I am super busy, as my blog goes through droughts of posts. And even though it is summer, we have been busy.

We get outside for a little bit each day, either bike riding or to the pool. We are trying to teach the two middle girls to ride without training wheels. I have decided that's up there with potty training and phonics - my least favorite things I do as a parent. But since it would look funny for 12 year olds to ride with training wheels, I guess the middle girls need to learn before they get there. We had to get a couple more bikes too as we didn't even have enough for all the girls. Plus a couple of them had outgrown their bikes. So right after breakfast we go out until the heat drives us inside, roughly 45 minutes.

Then we come inside and deep clean one room of the house. We like it better on days when we clean first and then go to the pool. Instead of spring cleaning we summer clean. We have done the whole house except the kitchen so that's on the agenda for this week. Then I need to wash curtains and clean light fixtures and we are done!

The girls also do math and Latin one day a week. The three older girls are also taking piano lessons, so they practice every day on that too.

After lunch, I spend the afternoon doing lesson plans, running copies, gathering books, and just generally getting prepared for the next school year. I am hoping to complete that in June so I can take July and early August OFF and not even think about school for a while. I'm hoping to get a few rooms and maybe some trim painted during July.

I have also decided that shopping for and signing up for insurance is about my least favorite activity, next to cleaning my shower (uh-oh, I need to do that this week, too). Since Kelly changed jobs, we had to fill out all new health, vision, dental, and life insurance with the new company. At the same time, our homeowners insurance shot up, so I had to shop around and switch our homeowners and car insurance. Plus the new employer didn't offer enough life insurance so we've been shopping around for additional life insurance. Not fun.

We've also had some sick kids - a couple with tummy bugs and one trip to the urgent care clinic because Brynna dropped a griddle on her big toe. We thought it was broken but it is just a deep bruise. Her whole toe nail is navy blue. I told her we needed to get some polish to match and just paint all her toenails that color - people would just think she's being funky. I think it would go fabulously with her red hair.