Oy vey!!

I'd like to ask you to join me with a cup of coffee for this post. Ok, so I don't drink coffee... I mostly drink water, but you get the point. This is probably going to be a long post...

Friday night we had a friend and her 2 children over for dinner. Neither of my kids had napped all day, so they were pretty worn out. My friends' kids were pretty tired, too. All 4 kids were doing the best possible thing... Playing individually!! This meant there were very few "incidents" over toys. Sharing becomes MUCH more difficult when the kiddos are tired!! Maddy was riding her rocket ship in the kitchen. This was a gift for her first birthday, so you can imagine it's size... It's pretty low to the ground... Seemingly safe for an almost 3 year old!! I'm not entirely sure what happened, but while Bryan and I were working to get dinner served, Maddy fell off the rocket. I thought she banged her head on the wall, so I scooped her up to comfort her (she was crying). Maddy is usually a trooper with little bumps and falls. She is often known to fall down, stand back up and yell, "I'm ok Mom!!" That being said, when she laid there crying, I felt like she probably did get a little hurt. We sat down to eat, and she was being very sensitive about EVERYTHING. If her friend looked at her or anyone spoke to her, her eyes welled up with tears, her lip poked out and she tried not to cry. VERY uncharacteristic!! I got her some Tylenol and told her I thought she'd feel better soon. After dinner, I sent her out in the yard with the other kids and told her to play. She played, but wouldn't really use her arm much... When I was getting her ready for her bath, she told me that taking her shirt off hurt, and putting her PJ's on after bath hurt, too. I told her to get some rest, and we'd see how she felt in the morning (that was about 7 PM). Around 10 PM, she woke up crying. I gave her some Motrin, and she fell back asleep. I called the on-call doctor to see what she suggested. She suggested that we take her to the ER considering that the pain woke her up.

Bryan stayed home and slept (someone needed to stay with Amelia), and Maddy and I ventured to the Children's hospital in town. We arrived around 11 PM. We watched the movie Bolt in the waiting room... The WHOLE movie... Around 1 AM they finally called us back to an exam room. They looked at her arm, and there was a little swelling around her elbow, so they sent us to radiology for an x-ray. The doctor looked at the x-ray and couldn't tell if it was broken or not (there was no radiologist working that night), so they put a splint on it, sent us home and told us to make a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician on Monday...

Maddy was SO well behaved at the hospital!! She stayed awake the whole time, didn't complain and sat with me the whole night!!! She was so brave!! I was so proud of her!!

Fast forward to this morning... As soon as the clinic opened, I called to make an appointment. We had an appointment for 8:15 this morning. As soon as the doctor came in, she already had all the information from the hospital and a radiologist had already looked at the x-ray and concluded that her arm is fractured. We were sent home with some Motrin, arm still in the splint and sling and a promise of an appointment with a pediatric orthopedist.

I got a phone call about 2 hours later with information about tomorrow's doctor's appointment for Maddy. Looks like she'll be wearing a cast for the next 4-6 weeks... Poor kid!! She's been SUCH a trooper, though!! She rarely complains about the arm!! She's figuring out how to do things one-handed!! She even put her sandals on all by herself this morning!!! I feel so bad, but it was just one of those falling-just-wrong moments!!! The biggest disappointment is that I'm assuming our beach days are over!! I'm so thankful that we got so many days in before this!! I'm also thankful that she wasn't in a cast for the whole summer... and long-sleeve winter clothes would be tough to deal with, too... Here's hoping that this heals quickly and the time flies by!!

So, there you have it!! The whole long saga of Maddy's fractured arm!! She's doing GREAT!! I'll just be glad when all of this is behind us!!

I'll try to remember to post a photo of her tomorrow after she gets the cast... I'm hoping they let her choose a color, so it can be more "personalized"!! :-)

I hope everyone's week is getting off to a good start!!