Oh Dear...

I'm pretty sure teeth aren't supposed to come in looking like this...


Connor is starting to have a funny little lisp because of the crazy position of that front tooth. SIGH!!

Thank goodness for antibiotics, because I got my first ever round of pink eye two weeks ago, and it's as horrible as it looks


My lower eyelid started to hurt when I'd blink on a Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning, the very rim of my lower lid was a little more pink than normal (where the eyelashes grow out), and both top and bottom eye lids felt tingly. No stinging or burning, just tingly, like your foot when it falls asleep. My eye had never felt like that before so, suspecting Pink Eye, went into Prompt Care. The doctor wasn't ready to confirm pink eye since there was no itching, no goop, and nothing really pink yet (just faintly along the rim of my lower eye lid). He gave me an eye exam "just in case", and since I didn't do very well with my right eye, the doc agreed maybe I was getting pink eye after all. He prescribed me some ointment, but suggested I wait to use it until I saw some more visible symptoms, and gave directions to come back if symptoms worsened and the ointment didn't work. I took the above picture two hours after I filled the prescription. CRAZY how quickly it got bad!

My next picture would have been described: "I'm pretty sure belly buttons aren't supposed to look like this", but Jared refused to let me photograph the suspected return of the umbilical hernia he had as a baby. It's not nearly as big as it was during his first year of life, but there's a definite little bulge, with a definite little "squish" sound when you poke at it. It really grosses him out that he has it, but it's not hurting him, and it's not overly large (nothing anyone would even think twice about, really, unless you're his MOM, and then you can tell something is a little "off").

We like to keep things interesting in this family, can you tell?!?!

Ear Tubes

Several years, numerous hearing tests, several different doctors, and we FINALLY reached a point where it was agreed that Connor was experiencing some hearing loss, which was determined to be the result of chronic fluid build-up in his ears. After 2 rounds of high strength antibitiocs and no real change in the fluid build-up, along with several weeks of "let's give it some time" (over the course of 3.5 months!), Connor was scheduled to get tubes in his ears.

Our check-in time was 11am, and we were put into a room around 11:30am. There was a fairly steady stream of nurses coming in to intruduce themselves, check Connor's name/birthday/procedure, explain different things, etc. prior to the 1pm surgery. They had this tiger gown already laid out for him before we even arrived toting Mali the tiger, so although Connor wasn't super enthused about the gown, he was impressed that it matched Mali. LOL


We spent the time in-between all the nurses coming in playing some games on the iPad.


At about 12:40pm, the anesthesiologist came in and fitted Connor with a face mask which would be used during the surgery. He gave Connor the choice of having a scented spray put in it and Connor chose bubblegum. Connor spent the next 20 minutes happily sniffing the bubblegum scented mask while the nurses rigged him up with heart rate monitors, blood pressure monitors, IV lines, etc. Connor was really proud of the fact that he let them put in the IV without a fuss (they did use a bit of numbing cream first, but I saw him wince a bit when it first went in and he said he felt a pinch, but he sat there and held his arm still)


At 1pm pretty much on the nose, two nurses came in and squirted something into his IV line to relax him. They said it would take about a minute to start working and I should hurry up and give him hugs and kisses because he wouldn't remember much of anything very shortly. I gave hugs and kisses and told him I'd be waiting for him, and he was right in the middle of saying "I still don't feel anything" when he started slurring his words and had a blank look on his face. Pretty funny!!! I asked for another kiss and he looked down at my lips, but his lips didn't move at all in response. Dan had gone to work ridiculously early in the morning (left the house at 1:30am!) in order to get a day's work in and still make it to see Connor in the recovery room. He ended up showing up JUST after Connor zoned out, but he got to see Connor before he was wheeled away to surgery.

We were told it would be a ten minute procedure and the surgeon should be out to talk to us within about twenty minutes. I'll admit to feeling a bit anxious when it was hitting the 30 minute mark and the surgeon hadn't come out yet, but thankfully I had my very dear friend Stephanie, along with Dan, to help pass the time while we waited! The surgeon ended up coming out after 35 minutes and said that they'd had to spend a lot of extra time suctioning out his right ear because the fluid in that ear was so thick is was more like glue. He had they had to bring in the big suction machine (not sure if he was joking or serious...)! Otherwise, things went fine and we were given recovery/treatment instructions and asked to wait a bit longer for Connor to wake up some more before they took one of us back.

It was probably another 10 minutes before a nurse came and took me back to Connor. He was curled up in a ball on his side, layered under blankets and surrounded by pillows, and was a very pathetic sight. He glanced up and gave me a quick smile before tucking himself back into a ball. The nurse had me climb in the bed with him and snuggle him. It's hilarious to me that he's smiling and looking alert in this picture because he was SUPER out of it, still. Rallied for the two seconds it took me to hit the camera button on my cell phone then slumped down again. ha!


He was really trying hard to wake up, but it was slow-going! He was slurring when he tried to talk, and was really restless. The more restless he was, the more agitated he got because of all the wires/cords all over him getting tangled and pulling at him. He was definitely more asleep than awake at the point he started slurring in a fairly loud volume that he just wanted to "GO HOME!" and "WHAT IS THIS STUFF ALL OVER ME?!?". (He was acting drunk and disorderly! ha!). This picture got taken accidentally (I was trying to shift the screen to send the previous picture to Dan but snapped a new one on accident), but shows how he kept looking down at himself and trying to see what was all over him.


Then he was really crying about his right ear hurting. It concerned the nurses because he wasn't even very awake yet and already complaining about the pain, so they tracked the surgeon down in another surgery and worked out an oral dose of pain meds, in addition to what he'd been given in his IV. They also got him set up with a heat pack for the sore ear, and I asked if it was okay to give him a few sips of water (anyone who knows Connor knows he needs to be fed and given fluids at fairly regular intervals or behavior/attitude take a nosedive and he hadn't had anything pretty much all day). The nurse came back with some ice chips and I spooned small bits into his mouth at a time. He was definitely coming around a bit more at this point, and perked up quite a bit after getting through the cup of ice chips.

He was happy to see that Mali got to wear a mask during surgery, just like him (they even let him keep it!)


It was probably 2:15 when they felt he was ready to move into the room we started out in, where Dan could join us to finish out CJ's recovery. At this point, he was fully awake and no longer "yelling" or crying. Hard to be upset at the yelling/crying behavior when the kid wasn't even really awake at that point, and was clearly disoriented and stressed. It was hard to see him that way, but definitely had a humorous side to it! Once we were in the other room and Dan joined us, they gave Connor apple juice, some graham crackers, told him he could get dressed, and sent us on our way. He enjoyed the wheel-chair ride out to the car!


We were home around 3:15pm and you'd never even know anything had happened at that point. He ate half the house once we brought him inside and would have kept eating, but I made him take a break so he didn't overwhelm his stomach after it was empty all day!

Doctor said there may be a little swelling for another couple days so we might not see results in his hearing ability immediately. My fingers are crossed this does the trick!!!! Will be nice to have no more "what??" a zillion times a day!!!

Olympic dreams

I don't ever remember watching the Olympics as a kid and thinking, "I'm going to do that someday!" It was always more of a, "Wow, sure wish I could do that!" sort of thing.

Jared and Connor? It's a definite "I'm going to do that someday!"

Jared told me he's going to beat Michael Phelps's swimming records, and everyone is going to know HIS name instead. Connor has big dreams of being an olympic diver. I LOVE that they are so inspired by the Olympics to have dreams of competing someday themselves, that they have an enjoyment of the pool, and that they have such confidence in themselves.

Sometimes, though, that confidence goes a little too far, especially where Connor is concerned!

During a recent stay at a hotel, Connor decided to attempt a dive similar to this one (without the benefit of a spring board, or any training):


Before we had any warning of what he was about to do, he'd put his back to the water, jumped up, and flung himself forward in an attempt at a somersault, landing with a sickening THUD face-first on the concrete pool deck. His body slumped down into the water. He was holding onto the wall, but wasn't making any sound.

Dan got to him first, so I backtracked for the towel, fully expecting to need it to mop up what was left of his face. I was positive there'd be missing teeth and/or a broken nose. If you'd heard the sound of his face on that concrete, you'd have been expecting total gore as well. aughhh!!

I don't know how he did it, but the indestructible little guy "only" ended up with a minor goose-egg at his hairline (more of a brushburn than anything; his nose and lip clearly took the bigger brunt of the fall), a pretty scraped up nose, and a shredded inner lip.


The picture doesn't do justice to his inner lip. There were actual strings of skin where his teeth grated at the inside of his lip. The lip wound went all the down to the base of the gumline, and swelled up pretty good that night.

None of his injuries seemed worthy of medical attention, but we kept a close eye on him for the evening. By the next morning, the swelling was gone in all three areas (head, nose, lip), and as far as he was concerned, it was as if nothing had even happened.

I, on the otherhand, have woken up at least once a night since it happened, hearing the sound of that THUD of his face in my dreams. I'm so thankful it didn't turn out to be worse, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed he's always so lucky, because I have no doubt he'll continue in his little dare-devil ways.

Extreme Mosquito Bites

I'm sure I've posted on here several times before, sharing pictures of the huge welts Emily Grace gets from mosquito bites, but I am continually amazed (and repulsed) at what happens to her poor body when she gets bit!

She was at her cousin's birthday party BBQ Sunday night and got all bit up (I hadn't thought to send her with bug spray, having dropped her off at 11am that day!).

This was Monday morning. Looks like a broken arm or something!




She has two less "severe" bites on her left shoulder, and one decently ugly one near her right arm pit (probably silver dollar sized around and 1/4 inch-ish high). They are bright red, very firm, and hot to the touch.

Not only is she extremely sensitive to the bites, but mosquitos also tend to just SWARM her. Where maybe the rest of us will get one bite (if any), she'll get 4+ in a matter of seconds. We usually spray her pretty diligently with bug spray, but sometimes the pesky bugs come out earlier than we expect, or we've lost track of time, OR they flat out just bite her anyway! She was recently on a round of antibiotics from a bite on her knee that wouldn't heal and got infected (despite Neosporin, frequent bandaid changes, and careful cleaning of the area of the bite). The infection cratered down so deep the doctor said he was worried it would get into her knee joint. And it all started out from a simple mosquito bite, which on a "normal" person would have faded within several hours. I feel so bad for her! She takes it all in stride, but I know that she's extremely uncomfortable (large, firm, hot red, itchy welts that last for weeks can't be fun). I wish there was something I could do for her! Benedryl takes away some of the itch, but we haven't had much luck with the redness and swelling so far, or in speeding up the healing process. sigh...

Wounded foot

As I was doing final packing Monday night before traveling to Pennsylvania for the week, I somehow managed to hurt my foot! All I did was squat down on the balls of my feet to dig through my yarn stash, and when I stood back up, something popped (not an audible pop, but a pop/shift I could FEEL in my foot). Pain shot through my foot, then the ball of my foot swelled up (I compare it to one of those tension balls you grip, and it is squishy, but firm?). After about two hours, the swelling felt like it had gone away, and I never gave my foot another thought. Tuesday morning we arrived in Pittsburgh and spent the day attending the viewings for Dan's grandma and connecting up with all the family. Later in the day, my foot really started to hurt, and I took my shoe off to see what was going on, and found a DARK bruise all over the ball of my foot, in addition to some pretty significant swelling (not the THICK lump I'd had the night before, but it the whole area of the bruise was larger than on my non-bruised food).

This picture really does NOT do the bruising justice


I was pretty positive nothing was broken, but the bruised area was very tender and I spent the entire week limping around on it. I still have no idea what exactly I did to it, but a full week later, the tenderness is going away and the bruising has faded a lot. Leave it to me to wind up with a stupid injury!

Crime Scene

A small history on Jared before I procede with the rest of the story: When he was barely two years old, in the middle of the night one night, he got the first of what would turn out to be probably at least 150-200 nose bleeds to date (I'm erring on the side of low; I'm sure he's had more). That night, he woke up screaming, I ran in, found him covered in blood, thought he'd been attacked...blah blah blah...turns out he was fine. He now sleeps with a box of tissues in bed with him because most of his nose bleeds occur at night. He's a pro at dealing with them on his own, and they rarely phase him.

As part of the whole frequent nose-bleed thing, he's also pretty much guaranteed to get a bloody nose if he gets bonked, bumped, punched, smacked, etc in the nose.

Over the summer, the boys were arguing over a toy. Connor was trying to get it (it was Jared's); Jared was trying to keep Connor from it; after Jared pulled Connor backwards by his hooded sweatshirt ("and tried to choke me to death!" as Connor tells it), Connor turned around and punched Jared in the face. Next thing I knew, Connor ran back to me at the other end of the house, SCREAMING that Jared was bleeding to death. I rushed out and saw blood POURING from both nostrils (wasn't even dripping, it was solidly running down in "rivers". The drips you see in the picture below are where he was moving around trying to keep the blood from landing on his feet, so the streams were splattering randomly). I grabbed a handfull of tissues on my way over to him and after about 15 minutes, got the bleeding under control.



I wish I'd thought to hold my hand out for size comparison or something because this picture really does not do justice to the reality! That puddle was a good 5-6 inches wide, and all the little splatters spread out more like 4-5 FEET wide. That's how forcfully the blood was pouring out of his nose! (The huge pile of blood soaked tissues in the trash can were very disturbing looking as well, but don't worry, I didn't take pictures of THAT!)

My family room looked like some sort of crime scene.

And in case you're interested, in the last 7 days, Jared has had 9 nose bleeds. I feel so bad for him!

Glass

SO, about a month ago, I opened up the cupboard where we keep the plates, pulled a plate halfway off the shelf, when suddenly something from the next shelf up came crashing down, exploding the plate, and leaving me with a shard of glass sticking out of my wrist and blood dripping down my arm. Turns out Jared (who's chore it is to empty the dishwasher) had run out of room on the shelf where we normally store drinking glasses, so found space on the high shelf, and hadn't QUITE been able to push it onto the shelf fully! It was sort of a ticking time-bomb, and thankfully I was the one who opened the cupboard, versus Emily, who I'd almost put in charge of getting out plates!!

I pulled the glass out (It looked like it was barely through the skin, despite all the BLOOD!), washed my wrist, and put pressure on for a few minutes to slow the blood flow and better assess the wound. It was a little "C" shaped wound (Mid-way in size between c and C)and there seemed very little reason to get it checked out. The bleeding had stopped after about ten minutes, it was tiny, the edges were already trying to stick back together... I put some ointment and a bandaid on, and called it good.

The next day, my wrist hurt worse than I would have expected, and I had a pretty decent bruise, but the actual cut was already scabbed over and was so tiny, it was pathetic that it even hurt the way it hurt. I chalked it up to being a tender bruise, and didn't put much more thought into it than that.

Well, now it's been a month, it's still tender to the touch, AND there's a hard lump. I'm kind of thinking the glass shard went in deeper than I thought and left a piece behind when I pulled it out. Here's me kicking myself for not getting it checked out after all...

Now I'm thinking for piece of mind (and hopefully no longer having a tender wrist) I'll be making an appointment to get it looked at.

See how small it is? Think it's possible it's just a knotted up scar and not glass at all? I wouldn't expect such a small wound to still hurt a full month later, though... Any thoughts?

Multiple Choice Quiz

Did Connor cut his finger on

A. a blackberry vine
B. a sharp part on the back of Daddy's tailgate
C. something sharp in the yard

or D. a razorblade he took out of the storage container from the back of Daddy's truck (that trail of blood went all the way through the driveway, the garage, and the house, as he got a wad of tissues)


He earned a stern talking-to about getting into Daddy's work stuff (the razorblades, in Dan's defense, were safely packaged and in the bed of the truck where the kids are typically not even allowed to be), but we figured the cut and the scare from all the blood were probably punishment enough in the end.

After he cut himself, he hid, because he was afraid he'd get into trouble. In the few minutes it took for us to hunt him down, his hand was pretty covered in blood and he was sobbing hysterically. It was quite traumatizing to see my baby's hand covered in blood and seeing/hearing him cry like that. I wasn't convinced he actually still had a finger tip at the time I snatched him up and ran into the house to get him taken care of, and calmed down enough to tell us what had happened!! The cut was on the pad of his right pointer finger, stretching from the crease of the knuckle to the tip. It bled a bunch, but didn't end up seeming all that deep. It took a good ten minutes to get the blood flow to slow down, then we cleaned it up and wrapped it tightly for an hour before checking on it. The inner layers had already begun "sticking" together again, so we wrapped it up again and left it alone. By the next morning, it looked more like a bad papercut than anything. PHEW!

We also had a chat about how if he gets hurt in the future, NO MATTER HOW HE GOT HURT, it's extremely important to come straight to Mommy and/or Daddy for help. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this kid'll be the death of me! Death by heart attack! aughh!!!

Mosquito season has arrived...

And poor Emily Grace welts up like crazy when she gets bit. This bite is three days old at the point I took the picture!

OUCH!!!

I wasn't outside to witness it, and Connor's explanation doesn't make much sense, but the end result was this:



and this (be warned!):



A LOT of layers of skin came off that poor little finger pad. BLECK! 2.5 days later, it's looking MUCH better, but still pretty gross. He REALLY did not enjoy me cleaning that up (he'd been outside digging in the mud, so his hands were FILTHY), but overall handled it pretty well! He's a trooper!

And the wall won

1: Connor was stacking wood for his daddy over the weekend and scored himself a nice scratch under his chin (I know, you can't see it in this picture, but it's THERE!)

2: Connor was coming down the stairs after gymnastics and mis-stepped the last step, lost his balance, sort of caught himself on the railing, but the momentum of his fall swung his body around and caused him to do battle with the pointed wall edge at the base of the stairs (the wall won).

3: The following morning, Connor was in his room, standing on something he shouldn't have been (which, I might add, had been in the "to be thrown away" pile I'd created Sunday when cleaning the boys' room, and which, I should point out, somehow got taken out again without my knowledge and placed back into the bedroom) and toppled over, smacking the center of his face on the puppet stage.

4: Not pictured here, but later the same day he scored the bruise/lump in the center of his face, he also managed to get a pretty good scratch on his cheek.

Poor baby looks like we beat him!


I took that pic Tuesday morning (I tried to get an updated one yesterday, but he was very uncooperative), so you'll just have to use your imagination on how lovely he looks now... His left eyelid is REALLY black and red, across his whole eyelid, and the center of his face is slightly raised and turning into a darker bruise. The scratches actually look pretty good a few days later, but the bruises have to get uglier before they get better!

I've honestly lost track of how many black eyes Connor has had in his lifetime (all of 3.5 years...), but I think he had 5 just last winter, and it's almost always that left eye!! SHEESH

Yet another injury for Connor!

Connor fell down Saturday morning, and smacked his face against a glass serving platter I had in my room (I'd borrowed it from a friend and haven't given it back yet, so it was just sitting back there with a few other odds and ends that didn't have homes in the rest of the house). The platter didn't break, it didn't have sharp edges, but Connor's lip burst open on contact.

I wish this picture better showed how deep it was!


It was definately a GAPING wound and bled PROFUSELY for several minutes before we got it better under control.

After just a couple of minutes (if that!), Connor was all calmed down and insisting on holding the paper towel to his lip all by himself, and was begging to see it in the mirror. We headed to the Prompt Care in our area, where we got rushed right back and they checked him out. The nurses kept coming in and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over how cute Connor was, and how GOOD he was being (and he really was being AMAZING). Doc said it was hard to tell if they'd need to do stitches or if they could get away with the glue stuff they use, but he felt pretty confident it would warrant 1 to 2 stitches. In order to get a good look at it, they had to numb it first. They used some pale blue looking liquid on a cotton ball taped to his lip for about 20 minutes to numb it. Apparently, whatever is in the numbing solution also restricts blood flow to the area, so imagine my surprise when they pulled the cotton ball off and his lip was WHITE (except the gaping wound, which was bright red bulging skin, with a little flap hanging...gag!). They messed around with the lip a bit and decided it was already forming a pretty good bond to itself in the deeper layers so glue would be just fine. Less traumatic for the little guys, they said. SO, they got the fancy glue stuff, squirted it into the wound and pressed the edges together for about a minute and sent us on our way.

Connor, Mr. Nothing-slows-me-down-for-more-than-two-seconds, has yet to act like he's in any pain or discomfort. He talks, eats, smiles, etc same as usual.

This picture was taken about 24 hours after the initial injury, and as bad as it still looks, it looks SOOOOOOOOO much better than it did Saturday! I'm amazed at how quickly it's improving.


My other two kids have landed themselves at Prompt Care for persistant coughs, ear pain, persistant fevers... Connor, so far, has gone in for a fingernail that got ripped off in a door jam, an elbow dislocation, a scary breathing episode that warranted albuterol treatments, and now a glued together lip. And he's not even three years old!

Great, now I'm only going to live to 102

Once upon a time, two little boys nearly gave their poor mother heart-attack. The End. (Her heart isn't recovered enough to be able to tell the tale)

ha!

We were at a local biking/jogging/walking "trail" in our area last night (paved path with yellow lines like a real road, but about the total width of one lane of a real road). Dan wanted to jog and thought Jared would enjoy getting his ride his bike with more freedom than just going in circles in the driveway at our house. I grabbed the bike trailer/jog stroller for Connor and Emily (I wanted the exercise of going at a faster pace than Connor could walk, so he was going in there, and Emily has an ear infection and wasn't feeling up to doing too much walking, so I put her in as well) and we set out.

Dan and Jared followed the trail to it's end, but I only walked halfway, then turned back, knowing Dan and Jared were going faster than me and would end up beating us back to the beginning anyway. At the point Dan and Jared were coming back and passing us, Emily and Connor asked to get out to run with them. We were within sight of the beginning, so I agreed. When they'd all reached the point where we'd originally started, Connor turned around and started running back towards me. Jared turned around at about the same time and started biking back towards me. Connor was on the far left (my left, as he was running toward me) and Jared was on the far right. It's a rather wide "trail" and I had no concerns about them both coming down the hill at the same time. But then Jared started going really fast, and Connor started running in a diagonal line towards Jared. With my heart in my throat, I opened up my mouth to yell at Dan (who was within a few paces of Connor, but turned the other way) to grab Connor, but I never got the chance. Connor ended up right in front of Jared, who had no chance in the world of stopping in time, and they went down HARD. The front tire of Jared's bike hit the back of Connor's leg and flung him belly down to the ground, and Jared launched over the handle bars, and would have gone pretty far, I think, but his legs got twisted up in the bike frame and he ended up coming down halfway on top of Connor. I don't even remember letting go of the empty stroller I was pushing (honestly lost all recollection of having been pushing a stroller in the first place, until Emily pushed it up to me a few minutes later...LOL), but suddenly I was peeling Jared up off the ground at the same time Dan was getting Connor. Both boys were in tears, but amazingly okay! Connor doesn't have a scratch or a bruise on him that we could find, and as soon as he was upright again, the tears stopped and he was on his way (I tell people all the time that he's indestructible!). Jared's head (with helmet ON and properly tightened!) hit and then whiplashed to the side where his cheek made contact with the pavement. He's SLIGHTLY bruised on the cheek bone, and the scrape wasn't even deep enough to bleed, just roughed up the skin a bit. His hip got a bit bruised and roughed up, and his legs have several bright red circles, which I suspect will be nice blue bruises when he gets up in the morning. His palms were pretty red where he landed, tried to catch himself, and skidded a bit, but no broken skin and they were normal looking by the time we'd driven home. But basically, they're both fine.

I'd been videotaping Jared riding his bike not two minutes before that crash. Knowing the outcome (they're basically fine!), I almost wish I'd still been videotaping so you could be amazed along with me at how things turned out. When I saw that bike get Connor's leg and tweak his foot funny and fling him forward, I was sure his little ankle was broken, and when I saw Jared's face slam down, I expected to see raw meat and missing teeth. Those boys hit the ground SO HARD.

We were so extremely lucky last night, and it was a good lesson for all of us. Even when they were all having a good time, we shouldn't have had an unpredictable Connor on foot running around anywhere near Jared, who is still rather new to the world of two-wheel bike riding, and Jared should probably have a bike with hand brakes (he was going so fast down the hill, I'm not convinced he had much control of the pedals to have used the pedal brakes even if he'd wanted to or had time to try). In the meantime, we'll be mindful of having him maintain a CONTROLLED speed down hills.

And I'm convinced the stress and fear (and the visual in my head that's stuck on "replay") have shaved a number of years off my life expectancy!!!!

The Bruised Bunch

Here's the story, of a little baby, who was running and smacked into a bar. And his poor eye, got very swollen, the bruise spread pretty far...


Here's the story, of his older sister, who was flipping and fell down to the floor. And her bruised bum, is very tender, I can't say any more...

(can't show that picture, sorry!)

You would think my children must be very clutsy
That they were both injured, hours after lunch
And you wonder, about my inattentiveness
and how I'd let my kids become The Bruised Bunch

The Bruised Bunch, The Bruised Bunch

How I'd let my kids become The Bruised Bunch!!!!

(and I'll tell that story TOMORROW, so make you come back, ya hear???)

PS, quick shout out to my BFF Kaci, who so graciously stepped in to guest blog for me when my computer was refusing to cooperate. I'm dying to test out a peppermint mocha now (thanks a lot Kaci! LOL)

LOVELY!

So the other weekend, after a day of fun and excitement, I was heading to bed when my knee suddenly felt really weird. It almost felt like my pajama pants were sticking to my knee, like they'd gotten wet or something. But when I reached down to feel, I felt a large lump on my knee instead. It was entirely disgusting and horrifying, and I stopped dead in my tracks, sure the next step was going to hurt REALLY bad (because, of course, I was positive I'd seriously dislocated something). Dan came back to our bedroom about 30 seconds later and discovered me and carried me to bed and convinced me try bending it. It didn't hurt, but it was strangely halfway numb to the touch, and kind of squishy, but firm at the same time (I liken it to a ripe peach). We iced it and wrapped it, and figured if it didn't hurt, it couldn't be too bad, and left it for the morning. It was much better BY FAR the next morning, but took a good two days before it was NORMAL. I can't be a good blogger and not have taken pictures to share, so you here go! Wasn't it lovely? (gag!)


I don't even think the pictures do it justice. It was a good 1 inch (at least) high and about 2.5 inces long by about one inch wide.


I have no clue what it was, and I desperately pray it never come back!

Holy fat lip and missing tooth Batman!

Emily was outside with Dan over the weekend while her brothers were sleeping. She wanted to teeter totter, but Dan was way too big to be her teetering partner, so he was using his foot to make his end go up and down. Emily was having great fun bouncing up into the air when Dan would push his end down, but at one point, she bounced too hard, lost her balance and fell forward, face first, into the bar. She had two FAT lips and a knocked out front tooth (which, thankfully, had already been very loose). Lots of blood, lots of tears... We got her cleaned up and calmed down relatively quickly and I took her picture so she could remember her fat lips. Of course, I never went back to look at the pictures until just now to realize that they really DO NOT do justice to the upper lip. Her lower lip was pretty well back to normal by bedtime, but the upper lip, on her left side, was HUGE. Very thick from inside to outside, and was the whole length of that half of her mouth. When she smiled, it never even moved. A few days later, it's still visibly puffy, but TONS better than before!

This was taken about 15 minutes after she got hurt


This one was taken about a half hour later (she looked so sweet sitting there snuggling her Lambie), and you can see her bottom lip is already looking smaller, and the top lip is starting to get bigger


And this is her just a few minutes ago. You can see the discoloration where it bruised a bit, and you can see how it makes her upper lip lopsided because it's still pretty thick and doesn't move as well as it should.