Life As We Know It: Longest Week Ever!

Really, I can't believe it's only been a week. And what a week we've had. Thad left early Monday morning for the east coast and didn't come back till late thursday night, I guess technically friday morning. Usually when he's is gone we have lazy low key weeks, and it started out that way. I even planned to put off all my cleaning till Thursday. Then Wednesday rolled around and Sammy decided to spice things up a bit by breaking his arm.
We were at dance class with Andi and there is a hallway where all the little siblings play. There is also a large stack of metal lockers in the hallway, and Sammy decided it would be a good idea to climb them. It was not. The lockers weren't anchored to anything and he brought the whole thing down on top of himself and another little boy. The other boy got away with some bumps and bruises, but Sammy broke his arm. Luckily the first mom on the scene happened to be a nurse, and before they got up stairs with the first aid kit she had checked him over, found the fracture and splinted it for us before we left for the hospital. I couldn't exactly take all three kids with me to the ER, so I called my mom to come get Andi and Peter from dance and left them both with the other dance moms while I took Sam to the hospital. And my brother happens to work at the hospital, so I didn't have to do the ER alone. Sammy is so tough. Here he is after x-rays awaiting the Dr. to come reset him arm.

Since they had to reset the bone, they used "conscious sedation", which are some wicked strong drugs that they gave him a shot of. I think the sedation stressed me out more than anything. They had him all hooked up monitoring vitals he whole time. It was just very disconcerting watching him go from screaming because they gave him a shot, to twitchy eyed slow breathing in less than a minute. And it took forever for him to come out of it.

When he did come around I kept talking to him and asking him things to get him fully awake. The poor guy was so loopy, the first thing I understood was "Lot's of eyebrows." Meaning he was seeing double, or triple. So I kept asking him how many noses and mouths I had and it took a while before we got the right answer. I thought he wouldn't remember that because of the drugs, but the next morning he told Andi that when he woke up mommy had lot's of eyes and two noses.
True to form, by the next day Sammy was back to normal and bouncing around the house like nothing had happened. Which made me a bit of a wreck. At the hospital they could not put a hard cast on because they had to wait for the swelling to go down, so he was in a splint with a soft cast. Which meant one wrong move and he could pop things out of place again. He was making me crazy. Luckily we only had to deal with that for a day, and friday morning the Dr. put a hard cast on. Of course, because of the way the bone was broken, they couldn't remove the splint or the bone would pop out of place, so they casted on top of the splint. It's huge. I had to seam rip his sleeve that night to get his shirt off.

He hardly notices it's there though, which is good and bad. Good because it's not bothering him, bad because he still tries to climb and do all of his usual nonsense. He just can't understand why I won't let him ride his bike or scooter or swing or swim. Or why I kept pulling him off the climbing wall at the park. It's gonna be a long couple of weeks. He also doesn't love his bathtime waterproofing.

You know who else has made me a bit of a wreck. Peter. He's progressing through the mobility stages way too quickly. He's doing this all the time now, end even letting go!

And then Saturday he started in on the stairs, and I don't have a baby gate yet!

So, last year when we inherited some ducks, the kids thought it was the best thing ever. Since the same ducks came back to our friends house and laid eggs again, we told the kids we'd get the ducks again. But a raccoon attacked the duck nest and ate all the eggs before they could hatch. We didn't tell the kids that so they kept asking when we were getting ducks. Friday Thad decided we should just go buy a couple.

And it has been a much better experience so far. Sine these aren't wild ducks they aren't afraid of people, and they follow the kids around the yard like puppies.