Alexander should be getting his cast off tomorrow, fingers crossed.
When he first got it on my friend Kari warned me that it would be so stinky by the end. Her baby boy broke his arm at our neighbourhood playground in Durham while I was teaching swimming lessons to his older brothers. He fell off the wiggly bridge and cried and cried and cried—the same other-worldly wails Alexander was making when he broke his arm.
He ended up pulling off his cast while in his crib one day and it was so close to the time he was supposed to get it off anyway that the doctor decided to just let it be.
I don't doubt that his cast was stinky at the end of four weeks—four hot, humid weeks in the middle of a typical southern summer!
Alexander's cast really doesn't smell very badly (at least not that I can tell from the little sniffs I've given it), but we've only had to endure four chilly, dry, bleak mid-winter weeks. I'm sure it would smell worse under other circumstances.
We've done pretty well at keeping it clean—always slinging it up in an old grocery bag when he eats and so forth—but it's still getting pretty grungy.
He's been pulling the stuffing out of his thumb hole, the purple has about rubbed off the palm of his cast from all his crawling around, and it's just pretty dingy-looking. It will be nice to have it come off!
The other day when we were getting ready to leave for Grandpa Frank's 90th birthday party (which was on Saturday although his birthday wasn't technically until today (he's birthday buddies with my brother, David)), Alexander gave me quite a scare.
Miriam had ridden up to Salt Lake with Grandpa (they left early so they could pick up Grandpa Frank) and the other three kids had been sent out to the car. Andrew was getting our camera equipment while I was frantically throwing things into the diaper bag and Alexander was crawling/toddling around with his shoes, whimpering about how no one would take the time to help him put them on.
He does not like to feel like he's being left behind.
"Just a minute, just a minute!" I called out to him.
His little whimperings kept getting closer and closer so I knew he was crawling up the stairs to find me instead of waiting. And that was fine because he's pretty good at the stairs.
I had grabbed a few diapers and was hunting around for a package of wipes when I saw his little head peek over the top stair. Then he did the unthinkable and pulled himself into a standing positions, right there at the tippy-top of the staircase, which he'd never done before. Usually since he has to crawl up the stairs he keeps crawling for a bit once he finishes climbing the stairs. This time he went straight to standing.
"Alex..." I squeaked.
He wibbled. I held my breath.
He wobbled. My eyes bulged.
He toppled over backwards.
I sprang over the couch and started thundering down the stairs beside him, hoping to get below him so I could cut his wild ride—his flipping and rolling and flailing—short. He managed to break his fall before I got to him, however, and we stood there (and/or lay there) staring at each other in a shaky, frozen panic.
"Oh, baby!" I said, scooping him up when I was able to break free from our trance. "You can't stand up at the top of the stairs! You have to come farther into the room before you stand! That was so dangerous! Mommy was so scared! Were you scared, too? That was scary, huh?"
I had visions of having to take him into the ER for another broken bone (which would just go seem completely aboveboard to all the doctors, I'm sure—"Don't mind his other broken arm. This one was an accident, too. Honest.") but he was perfectly fine. He hardly cried at all and didn't seem to be hurt at all.
And yet he somehow broke his arm while crawling?! Come on, Alexander! Falling down the stairs would have been a much better story—you should have saved your broken arm for this!
When he first got it on my friend Kari warned me that it would be so stinky by the end. Her baby boy broke his arm at our neighbourhood playground in Durham while I was teaching swimming lessons to his older brothers. He fell off the wiggly bridge and cried and cried and cried—the same other-worldly wails Alexander was making when he broke his arm.
He ended up pulling off his cast while in his crib one day and it was so close to the time he was supposed to get it off anyway that the doctor decided to just let it be.
I don't doubt that his cast was stinky at the end of four weeks—four hot, humid weeks in the middle of a typical southern summer!
Alexander's cast really doesn't smell very badly (at least not that I can tell from the little sniffs I've given it), but we've only had to endure four chilly, dry, bleak mid-winter weeks. I'm sure it would smell worse under other circumstances.
We've done pretty well at keeping it clean—always slinging it up in an old grocery bag when he eats and so forth—but it's still getting pretty grungy.
He's been pulling the stuffing out of his thumb hole, the purple has about rubbed off the palm of his cast from all his crawling around, and it's just pretty dingy-looking. It will be nice to have it come off!
The other day when we were getting ready to leave for Grandpa Frank's 90th birthday party (which was on Saturday although his birthday wasn't technically until today (he's birthday buddies with my brother, David)), Alexander gave me quite a scare.
Miriam had ridden up to Salt Lake with Grandpa (they left early so they could pick up Grandpa Frank) and the other three kids had been sent out to the car. Andrew was getting our camera equipment while I was frantically throwing things into the diaper bag and Alexander was crawling/toddling around with his shoes, whimpering about how no one would take the time to help him put them on.
He does not like to feel like he's being left behind.
"Just a minute, just a minute!" I called out to him.
His little whimperings kept getting closer and closer so I knew he was crawling up the stairs to find me instead of waiting. And that was fine because he's pretty good at the stairs.
I had grabbed a few diapers and was hunting around for a package of wipes when I saw his little head peek over the top stair. Then he did the unthinkable and pulled himself into a standing positions, right there at the tippy-top of the staircase, which he'd never done before. Usually since he has to crawl up the stairs he keeps crawling for a bit once he finishes climbing the stairs. This time he went straight to standing.
"Alex..." I squeaked.
He wibbled. I held my breath.
He wobbled. My eyes bulged.
He toppled over backwards.
I sprang over the couch and started thundering down the stairs beside him, hoping to get below him so I could cut his wild ride—his flipping and rolling and flailing—short. He managed to break his fall before I got to him, however, and we stood there (and/or lay there) staring at each other in a shaky, frozen panic.
"Oh, baby!" I said, scooping him up when I was able to break free from our trance. "You can't stand up at the top of the stairs! You have to come farther into the room before you stand! That was so dangerous! Mommy was so scared! Were you scared, too? That was scary, huh?"
I had visions of having to take him into the ER for another broken bone (which would just go seem completely aboveboard to all the doctors, I'm sure—"Don't mind his other broken arm. This one was an accident, too. Honest.") but he was perfectly fine. He hardly cried at all and didn't seem to be hurt at all.
And yet he somehow broke his arm while crawling?! Come on, Alexander! Falling down the stairs would have been a much better story—you should have saved your broken arm for this!
No comments:
Post a Comment