How is the arm?

I have been remiss, and I apologize. To update you on things, Joshua is awesome. He only took his Tylenol with Codein twice- he had a dose before bed the first 2 nights, and that was because I practically made him. He has had no problems and hasn't complained, cried or whined at all about his arm, leg or ear. He did bash his ear at recess today and he made it bleed, but it should be okay. He is suppose to get those stitches out on Saturday.

I unwrapped him today. I was really surprised at how far they spaced his stitches. I guess since I am a girl, all my stitches were made as small as possible to minimize scarring. His leg gash was a lot bigger than mine (the one I got when I was 9!), yet we both got 3 stitches for it. Actually, I think they may be spaced widely because the doctor was under a time limit. He did an excellent job. It looks to be healing very nicely.

He had 5 sets of stitching in his arm- 5 stitches at the wrist, 7 in the long underarm cut, 3 by his elbow, and 2 each in the smaller elbow cuts. And then there was the 2 in his ear. That's a total of 21 stitches. Oops, I forgot the 3 on the leg! 24 stitches in all.

Caution, gaping wounds.

If icky stuff makes you faint, you may not want to see this. I'll see if I can ramble on long enough that the pictures don't pop right up and gross you out. Today was a decent day, and I got most of my must do things all done. I got dinner in the crock pot and Rylee fell asleep. The kids were all happy and content, so I thought I'd lie down for a little nap. I had just settled in for a snooze, when Joshua came in, very distraught and saying "I'm so sorry about the window!" I was just incoherent enough that I couldn't figure out what he meant, but I caught the tone of voice and I was out of bed and down the stairs before I knew what I was doing. Then I saw the blood.

Joshua had seen his friend coming up to the house. If you saw the previous post, you saw Rylee standing by the door, looking out the window. Joshua saw his friend through those same windows and smacked the window to get his friend's attention. Unfortunately, he put his hand right through it. Oops. I admit to not doing well with the onslaught of issues: broken glass in and outside, a gaping hole where the window use to be, and blood. Lots of blood. Then I saw the cuts and I was even more overwhelmed. I kind of panicked. They were so big, and the way they looked, it seemed like there might be shards of glass still in them. And there were so many cuts! I got Joshua into the kitchen and sat him down. I put napkins on the gash in his leg and got some for his arm. Then I saw the slice on his wrist. I got napkins for that one. I saw more cuts on his arm, and his ear was bleeding! Aack!! How does one deal with multiple large cuts? I duct taped the napkins on and hoped there was enough pressure on them, since Joshua couldn't apply pressure to every on of the cuts himself.

I knew I had to take him to the ER, but what to do with the other kids?! I wasn't as rational as I could have been, but after several minutes of running around like a lunatic, I realized I could call the fabulous gal across the street, which I did. She had already heard and was getting ready to come over. I have the BEST neighbors! She came over and I got Joshua in the car. I loaded Rylee in as well and took off. While I was gone, this marvelous girl cleaned the blood off the floor and cardboarded the window for me. Dan got home about an hour later.

Joshua stoically bled in the car and was awesome. They checked us in and took us back and examined his owies. He had to gt x-rayed to make sure there was no glass- and there was none. After cleaning and poking the wounds, they decided it would be better to sedate him and he got an IV and some Ketamine and the doctor marathon stitched him together. It took Joshua almost longer get back to normal than it took to stitch him up. The nurse was awesome and picked up the prescriptions for me so we wouldn't have to go down to the pharmacy. We were there about 4 hours total and got home about 8:30

Here are his 2 worst cuts, all nicely cleaned up. He was so lucky that the wrist one missed his artery and didn't damage any tendons.

Here is the leg cut, by his knee.

Total arm damage. Can you say eeeewww, gross!

Right before they knocked him out. All hooked up to 500 monitors just in case.

Out cold and doing great.

All done, all bandaged, and still quite loopy.

This is the ear. I think he got 2-3 stitches because it sliced a flap of cartilage open. Icky.

All done, just waiting for the IV to get out so he can put on a shirt. Lovely bandage so we can't see the carnage.

Me and Rylee. Rylee was pretty good for it all. She sure gets heavy though!

So, Joshua has some great drugs. He gets Tylenol with codeine for a bit. Since the cuts were deep, he also gets an antibiotic. He earned the respect of all the nurses and the doctor for being so amazing. He never cried, never screamed, and never struggled. They were really impressed that he was so good. I was too. I think he did better than I did. He is a terrific kid.

Upping my Status

I have long maintained that people judge a mother by how well her girls' hair is done. If you look deep within yourself, you will see that this is true. No matter how frazzled or awful a mom may be, as soon as her daughters appear with perfectly coiffed hair, that mom is a superstar! My friend Sharon is a great example of this. (Not that she is a bad mom, she is a great mom!) Her girls always have such cute hair and it makes Sharon look like the best mom ever. I have discovered part of her secret. Check out this blog- http://cute2tryhairdos.blogspot.com

This lady shows step by step how to do some darn impressive things with her girl's hair. I finally decided I no longer needed to be intimidated by such things and I bribed Callie and Delaney to sit still yesterday while I tried out some simpler looking things. Delaney was my trial run and her hair turned out okay. However, between her naturally wispy strands and her tendency to rub her head on the couch, chair, floor, whatever, she was looking a bit unkempt by church time. As for Callie, well, Callie's hair turned out spectacular!

I need to not give a choice. Delaney only wanted 2 ponytails, and I managed to put them into a third, and then she wanted a big pony in the back. I should have used more goop. I used Terry's fabulous hair glaze, but I should have gotten her hair all wet first, rather than started with dry hair.

Check that out. Isn't it great?! And it was really easy. Since I did Delaney's hair first, I learned a few things. First off, wet hair works better. Wet hair, covered in mousse stays put very well. I was able to get this done fairly quickly and then Callie added her two cents worth. Callie has an unfortunate tendency to want every single hair clippie put in her hair, no matter if it matches or not. I managed to keep it to the white butterfly and tiny red heart clip. She also wanted it put into a ponytail in the back rather than left down. It was quite cute.

As I said, Quite cute!!!

Today, while Delaney was distracted at the computer, I saturated her hair with the sprayer and did what I did to Callie's hair yesterday. It was quick, easy and came out nicely. Rather than put the end pony in a little bun, Delaney wanted it left down, and she did not want a big ponytail in the back. So far, it still looks good and is keeping her hair out of her face.

This is what it looks like from the front. And check out how nicely bruised and scabby her lip is. Poor thing. I'm not sure the fabulous hair can distract enough from that!

And this is just a gratuitous shot of Rylee being adorable this morning!

Teething, Marshmallow Guns and a Fat Lip

This has been a rough week. Not during the days, just at night. Rylee is on the waking-every-30-minutes schedule and I don't much care for it. I was having a breakdown around 2am Thursday night and could not figure out why this kid could not sleep. She acted like she was so uncomfortable, but Tylenol wasn't making a difference at all. And sometimes, after I actually made it back into my own bed, I would get back up to see this:

She is much happier to see me than I am to see her at this hour. I felt rotten on Friday when I looked in her mouth (while doing a finger-sweep to remove a non-food item from it) and saw this:

Yeah, the 2 side teeth I knew about. The center 2, I did not. The one is popping through, and the other is sitting right there, getting ready to. So I feel bad that I was so cross with her, when she really did have a reason to be unhappy.

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Today, Joshua had a friend come over and we made Marshmallow Blow Guns. It was a lot of sawing, but the kids helped out.
Joshua did a really good job with the little saw. He probably cut almost half the pieces. I would have done it outside, but it was too stinking hot!

Callie asked if she could cut. I said yes and she looked at me and said, "I didn't think you would say yes!" She was so happy to give it a try. She made it about halfway through one cut before deciding it was harder than it looked.

Putting the guns to the test! It was a rousing success. I taped a bag of marshmallows to each gun and said that was all they got. When they had used up their bag of 'shmellows, they were done. They were so funny, running around looking for the marshmallows to reuse.

They had a very good time shooting each other and everything else they could.

Callie was too cute! But then, she always is!

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Today Delaney had a little accident at the neighbors. I was not present, but I understand it had something to do with being pushed and falling hard onto the neighbors driveway. This is what she looked like when I got home:

Okay, its actually not looking too bad. She had such a fat lip, it was sad. It wasn't till bedtime that I pulled up her lip and looked at what else was damaged. AAck!

She really messed it up in there. Poor little pickle. She kept dabbing it with a Kleenex, even though it hadn't bled for a while.

Mimi

I love this kid!

Marian is a hoot. She is so much fun, and I love her little mind. She refers to herself in the third person sometimes. She calls herself "Mimi", which is what Delaney called her before she could properly say "Marian". When Marian is on a roll, she just cracks me up. She'll skulk into the kitchen and demand, "Mimi want food!" or she'll declare "Mimi doesn't like!". It does get a little annoying on occasion, but mostly it is pretty funny. I do sometimes have to remind her to speak with proper words, and not like a cave man, but again, it is mostly amusing.

Her perspective is fun too. Last week, I had a frustrating morning coordinating all the things that needed to happen to get her to her doctor's appointment. As we were hustling there, I was griping about all the things that had gone wrong. I realized what I was doing and I apologized to her and told her I was sorry, it had just been a frustrating time, due to X, Y, and Z. Marian looked at me and said, "I think I'd like to be frustrated; it sounds like fun!" To her, the comedy of errors looked completely different than it did to me!

Its also interesting to see what she comes up with. She's hard to read and since she has a tough time coming up with answers when you ask her a direct question, it is a surprise when she says things you didn't know she knew. Yesterday Callie was very tired. Very tired and reeeeaaly cranky. Callie was having a crying meltdown about something and complaining that it was a horrible day, and Marian looked at her and said, "You can choose to have your best day. You have to decide to." I was floored! What a neat kid Marian is. And never dull!