Our First Broken Arm

If I was a betting woman, my money would have been on one of the J’s for the first broken arm.  I wouldn’t have laid down any money on Natalie being the first.  I guess I was a little bit right in that James was the cause of Natalie’s broken arm.  Ha!

So yesterday afternoon about 4:45, I fussed at James for something and he went into his room to pout about it.  I changed Michael’s diaper, then was changing Thomas’ when we heard some ruckus in the bigs’ room.  I sent Joanna in to investigate and I heard her exclaiming to James because he had pushed Natalie off the low loft bed! Natalie was crying, but not a hurt, horrible cry, and she came walking out of their room into the living room.  I hollered at her to come where I was, and as she turned toward me, I could see her arm was no longer exactly arm shaped.

I yelled at Joanna to watch Thomas (who was laying on the changing table with no diaper) while I set in to panic mode.  :)

The first person I thought call was my friend Martha, who is a Physician’s Assistant.  I needed someone to help me process what to do!  She gave me a few options (including helping with my other kids if I needed), and I decided I wanted to take Natalie to one of those stand-alone ERs.  I then called Matt’s mom, but she didn’t answer, so I called Matt who was on his way home.  He got ahold of his folks, who were in Kroger and had a bad cell signal.  I got a diaper on Thomas and left him snuggling his biggest sis while I put Natalie in her car seat.  Michael was happy wiggling on the floor, but Thomas had a fever and was feeling punk.  At some point in here I fussed at James again, who really had no idea what had happened.  Poor kid. 

Sweet sweet Joanna was crying as much as I was, saying she wished it was her who had broken her arm (because she’s older).  Have you ever in your life heard of such a wonderful sister?!

This momma blogger needed to take a picture, even though it wasn’t really the time for it.  :)  I took this one after she was in her car seat, actually using the flash on my iPod.  You know it’s pretty incredible circumstances when Jessica uses the flash.

I had no idea an arm could do that.  It was bent. 

As soon as Mamma and Pop pulled up, I drove up to the local ER with Natalie.  Here she in the waiting room.  Amazingly (or maybe not?), she didn’t seem like she hurt.  I think she was mostly upset because of how it looked and probably because of how I was behaving.

Doesn’t she look gorgeous?!

We only stayed in the waiting room for about two minutes before being called back.

They took an x-ray – she broke her left radius and ulna.

By this time Matt and his folks were home with the other four, and my mom was on the way home from the airport.  She’d been out of the country for a couple of days.  She stopped by the ER on her way home, and I decided to go ahead and go home to feed the babies since she was there.  Mamma and Pop had foraged for dinner at McDonald’s so the crew was happy.  They stuck around to make sure we didn’t need anything else before heading back home (to put away their groceries!)

Natalie was given morphine and Phenergan (I think?) to make her relaxed and sleepy.  They had her arm wrapped and were waiting for her to get dozy.  I figured I would be back before anything else happened, but it ended up happening pretty quickly and Gran (and Grandpa David) took care of sweet Natalie for the duration.  I asked her later if she missed me, and of course, she did NOT.  :)

I didn’t witness the rest, but of course it was reported to me. The doctor did a closed reduction to put her arm back into alignment and put it in a splint.  My mother said she will never ever the rest of her life forget the look Natalie gave the doctor when he set her arm.  I can imagine.

They took another x-ray to confirm it was basically back to where it was supposed to go, and gave orders and instructions for what’s next.

She got a purple popsicle from the sweet nurse and pretzels from Gran.  I’m sure the bill is going to hurt a lot later, but it was a super fab experience, as far as going to the ER can be.

Mom brought her home, and I sent Matt out for her pain meds.  I got her all ready for bed.  She was pretty exhausted and started to crash while having a little snack.  I got her all snuggled into bed with her arm propped on a pillow.  We woke her up before we went to bed and gave her pain meds and then did that again early this morning.

After a night of sleep:

She has been such a trooper during this whole thing!

And Joanna has been pretty amazing (as usual). Here she is reading to her little sis today.

Natalie’s been pretty sleepy today and enjoying napping in Momma and Daddy’s bed.

She has an appointment with an orthopedic doctor on Thursday for casting.  I will update with all of that fun!

Day in the Life in June

I try to get these posts done as quickly as possible, otherwise stuff gets left out and forgotten.  :) Sunday was DITL, I wrote up the timeline on Monday, and I’m posting on Tuesday – not too bad!

Even though I set my calendar on my iPod to show me that it was DITL the very first time I turned it on, I failed to see it.  I’m pretty sure somebody else may have opened my iPod and ignored the alert before I saw it.  I’m not naming any names though.  :)

Anyway, I woke up about 7:15 and nursed the babies in my bed.  Then Matt took them to the living room and I went back to sleep about 7:45.  Wahoo!

8:40am: I woke up and got myself and whoever else needed it ready for church.  I also did some chores, like pulling clothes out of the dryer and folding things that would wrinkle (badly) if left.  Here’s my growing pile that needs to be folded and put away.  I tend to procrastinate this job until I run out of baskets.

9:50am: I realize it’s day in the life as we head out the door for church.  Natalie is sad because we’re late for Sunday school.  (Babies had a nap in there and just woke up.)

We dropped off the bigs around 10:10 to their Sunday school classrooms. There is much construction, renovation, and demolition (not in that order) happening around church these days.  Here’s the hallway leading to the Sunday school rooms.

I grabbed a little snack before heading to the baby nursery to feed the twins.

10:25: Nurse the babies, chat with the ladies in the nursery

10:45: Send Matt to pick up Joanna from Sunday school, leave the babies, and go fetch James and Natalie.  Everybody grabbed a snack on our way into the gym for worship.

11:00: Attend The Vine for worship.  I must be honest; I’m a traditional service kind of gal, but it was too far to walk to get to the sanctuary on Sunday. :)  My kiddos loved sitting near friends.

And it was a lovely service.

James mooched a toy to play with.  Cutie pie.

Around noon we had communion and then I slipped out to grab the babies.

By 12:20 we were driving home.  The babies were crashed in the car, and Matt was feeling bad from his dental procedure on Friday, so we opted to grab some fast food for a fun lunch at home.  We also got gas on the way home, which is why it was 1pm before we sat down to lunch.  I made Matt a “milkshake” (banana, peanut butter, milk) since chewing was hard.

1:30: I nursed the babies while finishing my lunch (and Dr. Pepper!)

2pm: I vacuumed the living room and bedrooms while Matt held the babies.

About 2:30 we put the babes down for a nap, turned on Pride and Prejudice (BBC version of course), and folded the laundry.

At some point in there Matt took a little nap.  The big kids watched the movie with me.

3:45: The babies were amazingly still asleep so I prepped our schoolwork for the coming week. 

They woke up while I was finishing up.  I nursed them at 3:55.  Matt put some chicken in the oven to bake for dinner.

After I nursed the babies, I got up and fixed the rest of dinner.

It was on the table and we were eating by 5:50.

Poor Matt.  I had to cut up his food more than the kids’ food!

We decided to see what the babies thought of plain Greek yogurt.

They were like “eh.”

It made for a good mess!

And Thomas discovered that the sticky yogurt made picking up Cheerios much easier.  Bonus!

Michael chewed more on his bib than the food.

After dinner I bathed the babies, who were covered in yogurt.  Then Matt got them dressed while I cleaned up a bit in the kitchen.

At 6:30 I nursed them while Matt worked in the kitchen.  Then we traded off and he put them to bed.  I finished up the kitchen and dining room.  Ahhhh… clean table.

At 7:15 I started sharpening all of our sad pencils while Matt read to the big kids.  I think they had gotten all ready for bed while I was cleaning up after dinner.

I guess they were flossing while he was reading.  :)

Don’t you love a container of freshly sharpened pencils?!

By 7:30 I had overheated the pencil sharpener (it was fine after some rest) so I took a break.  The kids all went to bed.

7:45: I made myself a bowl of ice cream – yum!!

At 8:00 we told Joanna lights out.  (These days she goes to bed in our room and gets to read for a little while.  This has been working out so much better than putting all three to bed together.)

At 10pm I carried Joanna to bed and got myself ready to sleep. About 10:45 I gave up trying to sleep with all the swirling thoughts and wrote a blog post. 

At 11:45 I went back to bed and fell asleep pretty quickly after that.  Full day!

Seven months!!

The babies were seven months old on May 29th.  I’m quite a bit late in posting this update.  :)

This one of Michael was taken a week or so before he turned seven months.  I wanted to show his little tooth!! He since then has popped out the one next to it as well.  And Thomas now has that same one.

The main reason this post is so late is that I had all kinds of great pics of the boys and I just had to edit them.  Now that I know a little bit more about my software, it’s pretty easy to open up the pics and do some tweaking.  And I’m getting much better about being able to tell what I want to do to them.  The problem here is of course that I find it difficult to post pictures without editing them, as I have been so happy to do in the past.  :)

These next few of Thomas in the yellow romper are from the 28th.  I had this pretty light in the bedroom, an empty basket, and a super adorable baby who can kind of sit up.  Can you blame me?

Uh oh – baby down!

Can you get over these eyes?!!

Michael was not in the mood to pose that day.  :)

That night before bed – the babes with their daddy.  Love them!

On the 29th – their “official” monthly pics!

I kind of propped Michael up by the couch, trying to get a sitting pic of him.

It didn’t last long.  Here he’s trying to eat his feet.  Yum!

Mr. Thomas is feeling pretty good about sitting up these days.

And clearly, he’s also feeling pretty good about being a baby model.  This age is ADORBS!

His “big” brother is sooooooooo precious too, but he can’t sit up so well.  :)

I’m thinking this might be a Joanna face.

His tongue can be seen doing this A LOT.  He’s feeling his new teeth.

At seven months (or close to 7 1/2 months now), here are some things about the babies!

• Thomas is sitting pretty well but will fall over or backward with no warning.
• Michael can sit with some support from momma.
• Michael has cut his two bottom teeth; Thomas has cut one of them.
• They started trying some solid food a couple of days before they turned seven months.  So far they have tried avocado, banana, sweet potato, cheerios, and plain Greek yogurt.  They’ve eaten everything but the yogurt by picking it up and shoving it in.  I used a spoon for the yogurt.  They’re not super eaters yet, but it’s good practice!
• They love to chew on things.  All things.
• They are both sleeping well at night.  They go down between 6-7pm.  In the morning they might sleep as late at 7:15, but more often they are either 1.) up between 6-7am for the day or 2.) up to eat once between 4-6am and then down until 7:30-8am.  Really it’s a great schedule, but I just don’t know exactly what’s coming. :)  It’s fine for us though.
• They’re naps are still not stellar, but I can almost always count on three 1 hour periods during the day where they’re in bed asleep or getting that way.
• They are to the point where even when they are tired or hungry, they can be distracted for a little bit with jiggling, smiles, toys, singing, and such.  It’s a good place!
• They love going on stroller walks with their daddy.
• Thomas has gotten pretty sturdy at sitting on my hip when I carry him.  Michael needs a little more snuggling.  (Ask me if I mind that!)
• They are amazing babies and I’m so glad they are in our lives!

Just something I had to write before I went to sleep.

It is bedtime.  I lay two babies in their little bed, one at a time.  They are all swaddled up and wearing cozy hats.  They are not deeply asleep.  I lay down on my bed and reach out my arm.  I grab the side of their bed and jiggle it.  I pray.  “Please let them fall asleep.  Please let them stay asleep.  Please let me sleep.”  It is my plea, my greatest wish.  I feel it with my whole body.  “Please Lord.”

Sometimes they sleep.  Sometime they do not.  I pray.  “Please let them sleep.  Please help me to survive this moment.  This hour.  This night.”  I always do.

I sleep.  I wake up.  I hear one or both of them crying.  I wake up Matt to help me.  I can’t remember if I unswaddle them.  I can’t remember who changes their diapers.  I feed them, always at the same time.  Matt sleeps while they eat.  I can’t.  We burp them.  We wrap them up; we are so quiet.  I lay them down, one at a time.  I lay down.  I reach over to their bed and I jiggle it, gently.  I pray. “Please Lord, please help them to sleep.  Please let me sleep.” 

It is a prayer I feel so deeply, I feel it even six and seven months later. I prayed it on so many breaths those first few weeks.  Those prayers were accompanied by the constant questions – when will it get easier? When do babies sleep? When will I enjoy this again?  When will it stop being SO HARD? I hated to wish away their infancy, but I did.  I wished for the time they could sleep for a few hours, not in my arms.  I wished for a time I could manage my house and my family.  I thought it would take forever.  I thought the hard might last forever.

I’m not saying it isn’t hard these days.  I’m not saying hard days won’t come again soon.  I am saying it’s good.  It feels doable.  It is doable.  I don’t dread the morning.  I don’t cry thinking of Matt leaving for work.  The babies sleep so well at night.  They are the cutest stinking things ever. 

Most of the time these days Matt puts them to bed. I kiss them as he has one on each shoulder. They smile and watch me as they are carried to bed.  He lays one in each crib.  He sings to them.  They go right to sleep.

A few hours later when I lay down in my bed, I think about those first few weeks.  I remember the prayer.  I pray. “Thank you Lord.  Thank you for these babies.  Thank you for bringing me through those moments, those hours, those nights.” They were worth it.