Monday, April 25, 2011

Easter weekend and broken arms

Our weekend started out really great.  Angel-Leah and Tommy's birth grandma, Nanny, gave us tickets to a Resurrection Pageant sponsored by the church she attends.  She went to a lot of trouble to get us these tickets because they went really quick.  Mary Susannah, Beau, Angel-Leah, Luke, Tommy and I went, and it was amazing.  Held outdoors, we traveled from scene to scene as we followed the reenactment of some of Jesus's last hours:




The part impacted me the most was this scene, as we followed the enactment of Jesus carrying his cross with the soldiers and horses and all the people screaming behind him.  I was too far back to actually see the actor portraying Jesus, I could only see the top of the cross bobbing up and down and hear the screaming. I could hardly see as I fought tears:

I really appreciated the kids getting to see this.  I think it made it a bit more real in their minds.  At the end, we were back in the auditorium for the resurrection scene.  The man playing Satan ran screaming up the isle as Jesus rose from the dead.  In fact, he ran right up OUR isle, and Tommy just about had a heart attack.  It must have been awfully scary for a three year old, and he spent the rest of the play sitting directly under the safety of my arm.

We came back home and rested for a while, then headed out for a picnic with our homeschool group.  A new member was brave enough to have us all over to her house.    We finally found our way there thanks to mapquest, set out our brand new chairs, and relaxed.  The younger kids hurried to the trampoline, and I was excited to meet a new lady who is about to begin foster care training.  Anyone who has met me for longer than five minutes knows this is my favorite subject, and we were just getting started when I heard Tommy begin to cry hard.  I pulled my weary body from my comfortable chair and went to check on him.  He was laying in the middle of the trampoline and wouldn't get up, so I finally climbed onto the toy car that served as a ladder and crawled onto the trampoline.
I've written before about Tommy's melt downs, the ones that have caused us to put him on the Feingold diet.  Because of these, it's very hard to determine sometimes whether he is really hurt, or just in one of his 'moods'.  He would not talk to me, and wouldn't open his eyes, which usually signals a melt down.  But something about the way he was laying made me think he could be hurt.  I finally put my hands under his arms and dragged him over to the edge of the trampoline.  Trying to get off a trampoline with any degree of dignity in a skirt is almost impossible, but I think I managed fairly well, then I pulled my heavy preschooler into my arms.  He still would not open his eyes, and I noticed he also would not move his arm.  I stood in the middle of the yard, Mary Susannah at my side, fretting right along with me, trying to decide what to do.  I moved towards my chair, then moved towards the house, then finally decided to take him to the car.  I thought, if he is really hurt, at least I wouldn't have to move him again...
In the car, I tried to examine his arm which made him scream.  I could move his wrist and elbow, but moving the whole arm would really hurt.  I ran in to tell my friend and fellow co op teacher, Ronica, that I was going to have to take Tommy to the hospital.  Mary Susannah wanted to stay at the picnic and have her daddy pick her up, rather than sit in the emergency room with her brother and sister, so Ronica and a couple of other ladies agreed to take charge of them and let me head off. 
Half way to Cook's Children's Hospital, I began to panic about how I was going to get him into the ER and park my car at the same time.  Suddenly, it hit me to call son Max, who at my first words said he was on his way to help.
So, an hour later we knew we were dealing with a broken arm.  It was a "buckle break" (< check this link)  His arm was soon wrapped up in a soft cast by a very entertaining doctor.  We are taking him in Thursday to the orthopedic doctor to  have a hard cast put on.
So, now my baby has his sweet arm in a cast:

And he gets much sympathy from his big sister who broke the same arm on a trampoline not quite three years ago:

Brother Beau broke three fingers on one hand a few years ago, so he is sympathetic, too!

 Max also broke his arm when he was six, and Gage broke his leg when he was twenty, but I don't have pictures of that on this computer.  Too bad!!
Having a broken arm isn't slowing Tommy's snake catching skills down a bit though:

So we got through Saturday, and the next day was Resurrection (Easter) Sunday. Since Tommy- and me, by default - didn't sleep at all the night before, I decided to stay home from church.  Beau went on without us, and we slept in, sent Daddy to the store for pain medicine so that Tommy (and I) would be able to sleep the next night, and cooked all day since daughter Rachael's family and Max were coming over later for Easter dinner.  Rachael brought desserts with skills learned in the new cooking class she and grand daughter Chloe are taking:

And Mary Susannah and Chloe took lots of pictures of each other:

 We are discovering that preschoolers need two hands to do a lot of things, such as climbing into chairs, opening doors and holding a cup, so we are having to help Tommy along.  We go to the orthopedic doctor on Thursday to get a hard cast put on his arm.  

And we are fine...this broken arm by our little guy will go down with the rest of our family history of broken arms, legs, fingers, falling through windows at Antique Alley, falling off bicycles and breaking teeth, stitches, pneumonia that ends up in having to have major surgery...
It'll be a story we will tell over and over, and look at pictures and laugh...

And it will add just a few more gray hairs to my head, but the Bible says those are a sign of wisdom, right???  If life continues on at this pace, I should qualify for an EMT license soon!


1 comment:

  1. Aw, it just saddens me seeing those kids with bandages. I hope they are fine and recovered well.
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