Madalyn broke her arm on the monkey bars at a park at a Christmas party about 5 minutes after we arrived.  (This was the week before Christmas.)  I took her to the clinic and left the two older boys with friends- thank you, friends!  These pictures were when we were leaving the clinic and headed to the hospital because her arm was literally in two pieces right there (you can see the pain on her face- it sort of sedated her, poor thing,) and she needed to be anesthetized to set it back in place.

She was so tough.  The x-rays made her nervous because she knew they'd be moving her arm around and so she vomited once during those, but she really was a trooper.  We were at the ER for probably 7 hours, till after midnight, she and I.  I stayed in the room to witness the loud CLICK when the doctor got the bone back in place... she said ow, ow, ow... really steadily and methodically and monotone during this process because they said technically she could feel everything but wouldn't remember it.  Uh.  My heart hurts remembering that.  And then when she woke up she was hilarious.  She kept saying, "thwhy am thy thalking thike this?"  And "why doth my Barbie hath two heads?"  Then she would look at the super sweet grandfatherly nurse and say "why do you hath two headths?"  And he would laugh.  She also stared at the red light clamped to her thumb like she was on an acid trip.  The entire staff was thoroughly entertained.  A five year old girl is a precious thing.

This was the sling and stint she left the ER in because they couldn't cast it until the swelling went down.  And it was bound to have swelling.  When I first got to her after her fall I lifted her sleeve to see her arm bent into an unnatural S curve.  The clinic doctor said he'd seen plenty of grown men come in crying over a fracture like that.  Poor baby girl.

Took these pics Christmas morn.  I have seen that dress about every other day for the past several weeks, by the way, because it was one of the few things that would fit over her arm.

Having your bones in place is a glorious thing, isn't it?

And after Christmas this was the cast she got.  The cast with the ginormous elbow.  Not real impressed with the cast job the doc did, but that's ok because it served its purpose and guess what... it's OFF now!! She got it off last Thursday and didn't even want to save it.  I kind of wanted to because she went to her first sleepover and told me she stared at what I wrote on the cast when she was trying to sleep and she said, "and it was so sweet and it made me miss you."  :(  But can I really blame her for wanting to trash it and never look at it again?  I mean... you can imagine the SMELL.  Not something most people would hang onto, I guess.  On a side note, isn't Sam getting BIG?!!  :)     

Labels: boo boos, Madalyn, milestones, pics, pictures, sick days

...that my husband just informed me was never an actual hurricane.               

I've told you she's senseless before, haven't I?

And okay, maybe so am I for letting her do this.

It was pretty chilly and pelting down on her... not to mention the WIND!  But she's a daredevil.

In a few more years, she might be that one you see on the news, surfing or kite boarding while the hurricane sweeps onshore, and while the reporters from The Weather Channel and every local station grip onto palm trees and promise you in dramatic, breathless tones that it really is very windy, and did you see how their hood just lifted with that last gust of wind, lions and tigers and bears- oh my!

And I might be the woman in a moo-moo with a bottle of booze and barefoot from having an out of control teenager who likes to kite board in hurricanes.

Or maybe I'll just shrug my shoulders and join her.  That sure sounds better than a moo-moo.

(Her poor big brother had a collision with the dog right when we got outside and skinned his ankle very badly.)  It took about 6 Sponge Bob Band-Aids to mend him, and we left him dressed in warm clothes on the couch to heal.  We left the dog on the back porch.  To think about what he did.

Speaking of the dog, he got so scared last night when we made him go into the storm to pee that he hid underneath the deck.  Where there were surely roaches and rats and snakes. 

Shaun pulled him inside the house while he whimpered LOUD-LY.  We thought the neighbors might call the Humane Society, it was such a fight to get him back in.  Then he smelled like dead animals and had a black stomach, so he spent most of the night on the porch. 

(Just in case you were wondering what we did last night.)

Random side note: water droplets are very fun to photograph.

So is wet hair.

It adds a kind of ethereal quality, don't you think?

I feel like I can glimpse what she will look like when she's older in these.

I love polka dots.  They compliment her little white teeth, don't you think?

I love umbrellas, too.

Hm.  Maybe that's why I bought a polka dot umbrella.  (This isn't it.)

Of course, umbrellas have their vices.

Unless you're Mary Poppins.  She might, like Mary Poppins, go kite boarding now if a strong enough wind comes along.  Which is fitting, because in the first post I ever wrote I described her as being like Mary Poppins, "practically perfect in every way."

I took these yesterday and it has rained right up until now... while I was posting these pictures it stopped. 

What I should post is a shot of our pool.  It needs to be drained some- it is over-flowing.  Shaun read that we had more rain during this storm than we've had in the last 6 months.  Usually, we have a brief thunderstorm in the afternoon, if anything.

No school for three days- that's how this first week of school started out.  One mother said to me, "My house is worse than a Catergory One Hurricane, come on!" 

Three days of canceled school, all this rain and no lightening??  How could we resist playing in it?      

Labels: boo boos, Madalyn, photography, pics, summer, when hurricanes strike

I hope you don't get sick of hanging out at the beach with us this week. 

I, for one, am tired of the dunes.  So come on- let's go to the water!

Ahhh, there.  Her sunburned body up close.  Much better.

But I love that scraped knee, I really do.  Let me tell you how she got it.

All day, the day before we left, she begged me to take her on a walk with Charlie.  ALL DAY.  So I finally consented even though I was trying to pack.  We put him on a leash with her on the other end, headed out the door, and can you guess the rest?  Yes you can- two seconds later Charlie was walking her... dragging her, actually, down the sidewalk. On her face. 

She was lucky to come away with only a scraped knee.  We turned right back around and went inside to bandage her up before starting all over again.  With Evan holding the leash.

But all is well now because the salty ocean worked its magic.

Now she is busy making new boo boo's to keep count of.

Childhood is good like that...

You don't dwell on yesterday's wounds.

You wallow in the present. 

Labels: beach, boo boos, Madalyn, national lampoon family vacations, photography, pics, sugar and spice