Broken Bones

The past six-and-a-half weeks have been very interesting, to say the least. On October 26th, my sister and I decided to go walking around the community that morning. I left the kids at home because with Craig's job(driving bus for the local school district), he is home between 9am and 1pm. So I figured it would be nice to go without the kids. Craig suggested to take one of them, but I just wanted to leave them both. He didn't push it, so I left a few minutes later.

About five minutes upon returning home, Craig called my phone. My sister and I were talking and I was almost home, so I didn't answer it. Then he called again. I answered it and the first words out of Craig's mouth were, "You're not going to like this." Then he said that Caleb hurt his arm really bad. He had fallen off the arm of our couch. I didn't panic too much then, because that is not a far fall.

I got home to see Caleb just sitting on Craig's lap holding his arm. It was so pitiful. There was no bruising and very minimal swelling, so I wasn't sure if it was broken or not. I was really hoping it wasn't because we don't have health insurance. So we decided to watch it for a few hours to see if he starts using it again. This was around 10:30am. By lunch time, it wasn't any better, so I decided to make an appointment at the pediatrician. But of course they were on lunch, so I had to wait until 1:30 ( I think) to call again. We were able to get an appointment ASAP, so left as soon as I hung up.

The doctor looked at it and was 90% sure it was broken, so he put a hard splint and a sling on and sent us to an imaging place for an x-ray. And also a referral to a pediatric orthopedic doctor. The x-ray confirmed the break, but it was worse than we thought it would be with both bones broken (it was his left arm). And one bone (I think the radius) was completely snapped and offset 2mm. The other one was broken, but not all the way through.



We got in to see the orthopedic doctor on Halloween to get his cast on. It was a pretty easy appointment. Caleb cried and screamed at first, but when the doctor and PA were actually putting the cast on, he was a perfect angel. The cast had to be on for 4-5 weeks so we set the appointment at 4.5 weeks away. The doctor gave us instructions about what he couldn't do. And he also excused Caleb from gym class for six weeks! ;-D


The 4.5 weeks passed by pretty quickly. It was a pain bathing and dressing him, but it wasn't too bad. 3 or so weeks in, he started to try to use his broken arm as if he didn't have a cast and sling on. By about 4 weeks, we couldn't even keep the sling on him. He was using his arm so much that the sling kept riding up even being safety pinned.

On December 1st, he finally got his cast off! He was perfect the whole time with not even one whine or tear. The PA put little sound reducing headphones on him (so cute!) and started the saw. We got to keep the cast and the first thing I did was throw away the cloth sleeve that touched his skin. It was very crusty where it touched the palm of his hand. Gross. And he had gross dead and dry skin flakes all up and down his arm. Thankfully that went away after a couple days. He had to wear a wrist brace for a week just when he played for extra support.






Now he is totally cast and brace free and back to normal! One thing that I noticed was that while he had his cast one, he became more aggressive. He was very frustrated not being able to do things normally. And unfortunately, he started biting when he got mad or frustrated. Ella and his poor cousin June (who is three weeks younger than him) got the brunt of it. And a couple nursery kids. How embarrassing! But, since he's had the cast off, there hasn't been any biting incidences. I had also started putting him in time out even if he just attempted to bite, so I think that plus having the cast off is helping him stop. Knock on wood... I have also noticed he is much happier these days. I finally got my sweet and happy little boy back!

And here he is all healed up! He's not so happy in this picture, but he wanted to get down.

Happy Halloween!

Yes, this is almost 2 months late, but better late than never, right?

This Halloween was a little different since Craig had to work at Papa John's (which, by the way, he works for Barro's now! Yay!). I carved the pumpkin with the kids, and got them dressed in their costumes all by my self. It was really weird carving the pumpkin alone(besides the kids).




Since I didn't want to take them out trick-or-treating alone, we decided to go over to my sister's house. She lives only a few streets away, so it was nice. My mom also decided to join the impromptu party and go trick-or-treating with us. As I pulled up to her house, Craig called and said he was getting off work early! Yay! So he met us and was able to go with us. Afterwards, we hung out at my sister's house for a bit.

In September, I decided that I was going to make Ella her costume. She wanted to be Cinderella and loves to play dress-up, so I figured if I made her costume, it would be better quality and last longer so she can use it after Halloween. Besides, I also wanted to brush up on my sewing skills. And because I'm not very good and have only made a handful of things, I gave myself a month to get it done. So, we went to the fabric store to buy the pattern and fabric for a Belle dress. Yes, Belle. She changed her mind. Well, Ella changed her mind about five more times in the store before we got the fabric cut. First it was Belle, then Cinderella again, then back to Belle, then Snow White, then Cinderella again before settling on Belle. And that's what she got. And she was very happy. Actually, giddy is a better word.


For Caleb, we were just going to buy something, but I couldn't bear the thought of buying a cheap quality costume for $13. So, we bought a white sheet for $5 and made a ghost costume for him. We don't have that costume anymore because two days later, we needed to use it to clean up puke. We were on our way home from going out to eat for Craig's birthday when Caleb threw up. In the car. I didn't feel like washing it, so in the trash can it went.