An extra trip

Because we won't have enough of the doctor this week, with well-child visit sprinkled across three days and dentist and orthodontist appointments as well, we decided that we should squeeze in an extra trip to the urgent care clinic.

Grandma is laughing at us from heaven, I'm sure, because it all came down to our trampoline (an idea she vehemently opposed). I'm aware of the danger, but I also think a little danger in a child's life is good, so I'm not opposed to trampolines. We do, however, have rules and one of the rules is no wild bouncing when the baby is on the trampoline.

This afternoon he was on the trampoline with Zoë, Benjamin, and Miriam, but I'd asked them to not bounce and to just play with him on there because I was going to finally tackle the poison ivy in our yard. Things were going great until I was getting suited up and realized that I'd grabbed two left gloves and had to return to the garage to find a glove for my right hand.

So I left Miriam in charge for the two minutes it would take for me to grab a glove and when I returned Alexander was screaming a scream I've only heard him scream once before—we'll call it his "broken bone" scream—and my heart sunk. He was wild with pain, completely inconsolable.


Miriam explained (over his caterwauling) that the minute I'd gone back into the house Benjamin had started "jumping like a maniac" (that's an exact quote) and that Alexander had buckled his legs and fallen over and...that was that.

After calming him down—and settling Benjamin down to write an essay on rules and why we have them—I did my best to assess his poor aching leg. No area of his leg seemed acutely tender, but he refused to put any weight on it.

I texted Andrew to tell him that we had a problem on the home front and he came home to help get us off to the urgent care, where we discovered that there's no visible break (at least not in the x-rays we got, but now I'm thinking the problem was less with his leg and more with his foot, which we didn't get a clear image of because the nurse was holding his foot to keep his leg straight, so we ended up with a picture of her hand where his foot should have been). The doctor suspects it could be a toddler fracture (that is simply too difficult to view on the x-ray) and for now we're supposed to just keep an eye on Alexander.

He was still unable to put any weight on his leg at bedtime, though is happy to crawl (well, I'm not sure I can really say that he's happy to crawl, but he'll do it—mostly he puts his arms out and begs, "Mommy, tarry me!). He has his well-child check tomorrow so the doctor at the urgent care said to follow up there if he's still not walking.

This kid has the worst luck...

The golden lining, I suppose, is that aside from a quick catnap in the doctor's office (exhausted from the trauma of fighting off the x-ray machine, no doubt (a noble battle that he did eventually lose)) Alexander didn't take an afternoon nap and thus has already succumbed to Mr. Sandman. It's the earliest he's fallen asleep in days (weeks?).