Broken record

Ummmm...........yeah............
We really have been lucky...first break in 13 years...with 5 boys.
We've done stitches...lots of stitches. Mostly with Spencer and Sariah. Actually, Sariah only had 2, so mostly Spencer. Gabe had glue for his nose, but that story is for another day. Come to think of it we've been very, very lucky (blessed) because that is it. Until now...

Saturday afternoon everybody was playing...everywhere(it's useless to try and place everyone in their exact locations mostly because I don't remember.) Caleb, Gabe and I'm sure someone else were in their room.(the 4 younger boys share a room. a bunk bed, crib, and toddler bed.) Downstairs we hear a "thud" and then a wail and then Gabe came down to tell us that Caleb had fallen out of Joey's crib and landed on Jacob's bed with his arm. I was confused and as usual it took a while for us to get the story *understandable*. Turns out Jacob's mattress was off his bed. Caleb had fallen out of Joey's crib (why was he in there? I dunno. ah ha Sherlock Mom strikes again. Caleb just admitted that he had previously been jumping out of the crib onto the mattress. It's all so clear now.) apparently this time he missed the mattress and landed on the floor with his elbow. When this all happened we didn't think too much about it. We get bumps and bruises all the time. There were no real signs of injury. We iced it, gave him some Tylenol and later Motrin and watched a movie. Sunday morning we noted the swelling. Early Monday morning at the table I looked at the difference in his arms and noted the dark bruising in the elbow line and inner elbow. Freaked out a little and decided that he needed to go in. Jason took him to the Dr. then to get the X-rays. Our pediatrician is usually great, but it's flu season so he must have been busy because he didn't call back with the results. So my husband called the answering service, who in turn got a hold of the on-call doc. etc. etc. He called back and confirmed it was broken. Said Caleb should move it as little as possible(he actually said immobilize it but come on he's 4) and that we needed to make an appointment first thing in the morning with an orthopedic guy to cast it. We learned from the orthopedic Dr. a couple of interesting things. The brake didn't show on the X-rays but he had what were called *fat pads* that looked like dark shadows around the bottom of the humorous. This combined with the swelling and bruising(when bones break they bleed) said it was broken. And now we know.
We were concerned about how well Caleb would handle getting a cast. I guess he didn't do so hot with the x-rays. We bribed him with chance of getting a Transformer, one named "Longarm" which coincidently was the name of the type of cast he got. He did fabulously. He will be in a cast for 3 1/2 weeks. Not bad. Unless you're almost 5. The novelty ran out around 5:30 and then the questions and whining started. "Will you take this off?" " I don't want it on anymore." "Please, can we take it off?" "I want my arm strait" and then there were tears, hours of tears. Jason took him to go pick Spencer up from Scouts, as a distraction. It worked and Caleb came back with signatures of all the Scouts on his cast. This morning, we've had a few complaints. But he seems to be enjoying his Transformer. I need some suggestions, however, of more good ways to distract him, otherwise, these are going to be the longest 3 1/2 weeks ever.
Look at his poses. Is it any wonder that he broke it?


Oh, and I want to thank Jen and Maria for watching the two little boys on such short notice :)
and I want to thank Ellie for being the best baby ever, she went with us and didn't make a peep.

Good day to ya.