Day 6 - Two Broken Arms.... sort of

Okay, let's just get the big news of the day out of the way. After Dani prematurely posted on Facebook - "My little brother gets kid of the year award for breaking both of his arms today," I got several frantic phone calls (Grammie & Zen) wanting to know how Connor was doing. Okay, it sounds dramatic (thank you, Facebooking teenager), but it's just not that dire. Here's the scoop. He was out by the church with his friend Braelynn and one of her friends, and he fell down from his bike as he was coming to a stop on the sidewalk. He started crying and screaming, so the girls ran to our house to get me. I drove three blocks over to assess the damage. He said both his arms hurt and that he thought they were broken. I loaded him and his bike into the car and brought him back home so he could rest for a while on the couch after bandaged up his scraped-up knee and wrapped up the arm that hurt the most. Being the mother of five, and having been a mother for nearly twenty years now, has made me pretty mellow about illnesses and injuries. Besides a scraped-up knee, there wasn't a mark on him and I kind of thought he was more freaked out than very hurt. But I also thought it would be better safe than sorry to take him over to the doctor's office. Better to waste an hour there now, than to have a kid moaning at midnight and have to spend four hours in the emergency room. So we trouped on over and spent the requisite hour getting Connor checked out. The PA (physician's assistant) Dan Pederson had Connor do all kinds of arm and wrist movement. While both his forearms hurt, only his left arm was swollen at the wrist so that's the one he had x-rayed. Turns out it is something they call a "buckle fracture", which means the bone was bent and/or compressed, but did not actually break. Visualize a slightly compressed soda pop can. And here are the pics! -

Connor, kind of grumpy waiting for the doc/pa, grumpy both from pain and from his monkey siblings running around and around the exam table. You can also see where I bandaged up his knee with a gauze pad and fun neon green wrapping.

Fortunately, the doctor's office has an xray machine so we didn't have to spend four hours and $100 copay up at the hospital er.

One of the x-rays. I circled the spot that "buckled." You can see that it looks distorted on the right edge of the bone.

Dan putting a splint on Connor's arm. He is supposed to wear the splint for two weeks. An hour or two after we got home, Connor's right arm was still hurting and he insisted that I splint that one, too. So, he's got two "broken" arms.


The kids probably thought the suckers were the best part of being at the doctor's office.

Emma entertained herself at the doctor's office with my camera. Here are some of her pics:

The fish tank. It wasn't my favorite pic, but it was Emma's favorite fish so I'm including it here. "It's so pretty and shiny!"

I like the black and orange contrast.

Emma took a lot of closeups of Sam, whose main form of entertainment was to run around in circles like a maniac. I'm such a seasoned Mom, I hardly blinked an eye. Connor was more disturbed by it than I was. It's so sad when your spastic children kind of fade into the background like white noise.

Okay, so that was the main drama of the day, probably the week, but here's stuff that came before all the broken-arm drama:

We went to the track in the morning. Dani did some stretching, swinging her legs back and forth

More pics from Emma:

I've decided that children have an instinctual eye for composition, much better than adults do. I hope Emma doesn't lose the internal freedom to take pictures however she wants to.

There I am, running in the distance. And here's the quote of the day - as I was running past the bleachers on one of my 6 laps (I ran 1.5 miles), my four-year-old Sam yelled out, "Go, Mom! You can do it!" Yes, I can! It was kind of a happy parenting moment. As much as I cajole, nag, and have to be the border-keeper and disciplinarian, it's wonderful to see that some of the nice, warm fuzzy stuff is getting through, too. I think he was able to have positive, encouraging words to give me because I've given them to him, too.
"I see you!" "I see you, too!" Emma and I took pictures of each other, taking pictures of each other. We're goobers.


I just love the lines and composition of these leaves, a completely unedited pic of Emma's.
Where we live. I could just about make a coffee-table book with Emma's pictures this summer. Even after just two days, she has such an interesting collection!
And this is the funniest pic of the day. Look at Sam. See anything strange? I had to black in some pants. When I looked at Emma's pics later in the day, I nearly hurt myself shrieking laughing because there were all these nudi pictures of Sam just running around buck-naked, some of them quite close up and graphic. Needless to say, I deleted all of them but this one. What was he doing outside??! Can you imagine what the neighbors thought seeing Emma take pictures of Sam with his underwear around his ankles? I swear, some days I think it will be a miracle if social services doesn't show up on our doorstep.

I spent way too much time in the kitchen today, making breakfast burritos and banana bread
As much as we've increased our activity level, I have a sinking feeling that it's not going to result in any weight loss. Why? Because I've got all those kids home all day now, and I'm constantly cooking food for them! Really, I'd have to stop baking completely and stay out of the kitchen most of the day to get anywhere with decreasing the size of this tire around my middle. Ughh... But for anyone who wants a moist and interesting banana bread recipe, here's one I came up with when I didn't have enough bananas. I peeled and diced the peaches, then cooked them in the microwave for two minutes to make them soft enough to mash up:

Banana-Peach Bread

1-1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about four or five bananas)
1 cup pureed/mashed cooked peaches (about 3 small peaches or two large peaches)
1/2 cup canola oil
1-3/4 cups white sugar
1/4 cup milk
4 eggs
1 tsp salt
3-1/4 cups all-purpose white flour
2 Tbsp baking powder

Mix the wet ingredients together, including the sugar. Then stir in the dry ingredients. Pour into two loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Test doneness with a toothpick. To make strictly banana bread, increase the mashed bananas to 2 cups, take out the peaches, but add 1/2 cup applesauce. You won't taste the applesauce, but it will help the bread to be really moist. This bread was so delicious, two loaves of it were gone by the end of the day!