Sunny Days

The weather has been beautiful here. We've been trying to stay busy, safely.  Walks in the wagon, rides in the swing, sidewalk chalk, popcicles...makes for fun, sunny days.

Really? Seriously?

Let me take you back to yesterday.  We had a great morning at church, great lunch and playtime after church, a GREAT nap, then a unwanted good bye to daddy at the airport, but we both knew it was going to be a better week this week.  It had to be, it really couldn't get any worse, I mean four doctor visits in five days last week, it had to be better.  Boy were we quickly, and I mean quickly, shown otherwise.  Once we left Ben, I thought I'd take the girls to Target.  Whitney needed a new bike helmet and she likes to look at all the toys.  Then I thought I'd take them to McDonald's for dinner and let Whitney play a little bit in the playground.  I warned Whitney not to crawl up the slides, you know kids, they always want to do that and so I try to always tell her not to everytime we go to a playground.  Well, I was on the phone and feeding Lindsey, next thing I know, I hear whimpering coming from the only child in there, my child.  Keep in mind, by this time, Ben is barely in the air.  She tells me she fell on her shoulder and is crying, not terribly, but she wouldn't really stop, which for her is huge because she usually doesn't cry when she gets hurt.  I mean, I've seen this child take it to the face on concrete and only cry for like 30 seconds.  Crying is not her thing.  After talking with her I realize that she was indeed crawling up the slide when this happened because, in her words, "she couldn't find the path to the pink slide".  So in her little mind since she couldn't find the path at the top to the pink slide to go down, she would just climb up the pink slide and then she would know where it started.  Good thought, in theory.  I kept looking over her shoulder, nothing looked weird, but it was clear it was bothering her.  I took her to our friends, Chad and Mandy's, to have them take a look.  I just wanted another set of eyes looking at it.  They didn't really see anything and she was moving it around.  Once we got home I remembered that one of our neighbors is an orthopedic doctor...BONUS!  So at 845pm we walked across the street to have him take a look.  He didn't feel anything, but when he rotated her arm across her chest, she cringed and wimpered.  He wanted us to come into his office this morning to get an x-ray.  All this to say...Whitney has a broken collarbone!  I know you want to laugh, it's ok, I did, at this point its all I can do.  It's better than any of the alternatives, tears, anger, tears, screaming, tears, punching, tears, depression, more tears, you get the idea.  In retrospect, it probably wasn't a great idea to take a child with a cast to a playground, but she had been doing so well with it...shoulda, woulda, coulda...I've already beat myself up enough...there are good lessons to be learned by mommy and daughter from this incident.  She is doing well.  This is definitly more painful for her than the finger and she can't do much with it.  For the next four weeks I have the task of trying to keep our very active 3 year old from being just that.  She isn't supposed to do anything, no tricycle, no scooter, no running, no jumping...nothing.  So much for that new bike helmet we bought. :)  She's doing well so far, but it's still hurting her, so she's not really wanting to do much.  I'd say by next week she'll be getting pretty tired of coloring, painting, puzzles, movies, cartoons, computer games, not sure how it will all work out, but I know it will.  In the mean time, tomorrow is Tuesday and we'll be making our second trip to a doctor for the week.  Lindsey is going to an ENT doctor since she has yet another double ear infection.  Six ear infections since October.  Two days, two trips to a doctor...Laugh!...you know you want to...I am...I love my girls!!!!  Sweet things!  I've decided that I refuse to let Satan win this battle.  So he can keep bringing it, but our God is bringing it bigger!

Hunting Some Eggs

Our Sunday School class had an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos today.  Whitney did a great job finding eggs, but did an even better job eating the candy.  And the cast didn't slow her down a bit when it came to opening the candy.  She's become a pro at using her little thumb.  Lindsey had a great time too, especially stealing eggs from her sister's and our friend's baskets...little rascal.  I think I found something new to entertain her with though, that's always a good thing.

Whitney's New Weapon

We went to the hand doctor a couple days ago.  He said everything in Whitney's finger should heal up just fine.  He said they see 30 cases a week of this injury and that her's wasn't any different than the rest.  She gets to wear a pretty blue, glitter cast for three weeks, then she'll have it taken off and will be, I guess, free to go.  I'm a little nervous about that, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.  She still continues to amaze me, she hasn't complained about pain one bit, and she has totally adapted to having the cast on, which by the way, might weigh as much as she does.  Our only issue now is getting her to realize that that thing can cause some major damage to someones face if she's not careful in all her gallivanting.  I'm quite sure one of us, probably poor Lindsey, will end up in the ER with a laceration wound from her cast before the time is up!

And You Thought the "Ketchup Toe" was Bad...(see the birthday post)

What do we do for fun while daddy's away?  Drum roll please...stick our fingers into doors, ride in ambulances to the ER and have a "procedure" to reattach a piece of fingertip.  Yes, the trama that I have always feared would happen while Ben was away happened yesterday.  He had been gone for less than 24 hours up to New Jersey to start training.  *Warning* There are yucky pictures below.  Whitney and I were set to have a great day together, just the two of us, getting her 3 year pictures taken and running errands.  We arrived the the picture place in the mall, got checked in and proceeded to the bathroom to change into her picture clothes.  As we were leaving the bathroom I noticed someone had left some infant baby shoes in there, so I thought I would take them out to see who they belonged to.  Whitney went out in front of me, the door closed on its own behind me, I turned to my right to ask the lady holding a baby if the shoes were hers, then...screaming.  I looked down, saw Whitney fingers in the door, hinge side, immediately opened the latched door and grab her hand.  I saw major blood, and what looked like her fingernail about to fall off, then I saw a major gap between one side of her finger and the other...not good.  I ran up front to tell the people I needed an ambulance and rushed back to the bathroom so none of the other children there would see all the blood gushing from her hand, all the while just squeezing the tar out of her finger.  A couple of ladies there helped keep both of us from freaking out, the people from the store brought her a balloon and an Easter basket full of goodies.  She was definitely in pain, but was mainly mad that I kept squeezing her finger.  Finally, a security guard for the mall got there with his little first aid kit and he took over be the mean finger squeezer.  Whitney started calming down, still crying, but just kept telling us to stop squeezing it and saying that she wanted her daddy.  I told her, "me too" and we prayed for Jesus to heal her boo boo.  The EMTs got there they looked at it, immbolized it, strapped her on the stretcher and off we went in the ambulance to Scottish Rite, a children's hospital.  She had calmed completely down on the ride there, and was giggling and jibbering as if nothing had ever happened.  Long story short for the rest of it...She broke the "tuft" of the bone in the tip of her left, middle finger.  It was severed basically along the bed of the nail through, hanging on by the pad side of the finger.  They had to sedate her, not complete anesthesia, and they didn't even call it surgery, it was a "procedure", I guess maybe because it was done in the ER room, but it sure looked like surgery to me.  They had to remove her fingernail to get it stitched up properly, 7 stitches there, and then 2 more to reattach the fingernail, so 9 little stitches total.  And let me tell you, I don't ever, ever want to see my child, or any child for that matter, be sedated like that ever again!  She did great during the whole process and really was her normal chatting self with all the docs and nurses, unless anyone wanted to look at it.  But even then she was tough.  The IV wasn't a fun experience either, but she made it through that too.  All the kid movies you can think of were at her disposal, so I think that helped her cope.  She watched Snow White and Tinkerbell.  We got home around 800, got some more pain medicine in her and got her to bed.  She didn't make a peep all night and praise God hasn't complained at all about pain today.  I've only given her Motrin and, besides the big club hand, she is her normal self.  We are so grateful that it happened the way it did. One, that Lindsey wasn't with me (that would have been a complete disaster), Two, that it could have been her right hand, further down her finger, more fingers, anything...This was the best of the worst for sure.  Tomorrow we follow up with a hand specialist and get more of a prognosis, but according to the ER docs who see this quite a bit, she should heal up just fine.  The pictures aren't the greatest, all I had was the camera on my phone.  We'll be sure to keep everyone posted.  Until then...watch out for those doors!

Just getting to her "little bed" in the ER room

Shortly after getting the IV placed

Getting ready to go to sleep, her little eyes glazed over...yuk!

Before...basically if you would have pushed down on her fingertip, it would have just  been open

And after...much better

Showing off her club hand

Strawberry Shortcake Party

We had Whitney's birthday party over the weekend complete with nine little friends, food, cake, ice cream, crafts, presents and lots of Strawberry Shortcake stuff.  Whitney had a big time celebrating her 3rd birthday with all her friends!  (P.S. For any of you that think it's silly to take pictures of cake, I understand, but this cake was too fun so we had to snap a couple pictures.  Thanks Mandy for the great idea!)

Waiting to get the party started

The Table

  

The cake outside...

and inside

Mommy and Whitney

Whitney and Grandma

Fun tattoos...

Whitney and Katie Beth

Painting fun!

Sweet Kallie

Time to eat!

Blowing out the candles

Daddy and Whitney in their strawberry sunglasses

Lindsey was loving all the people...and the pizza!

Silly girl!

Katie Beth

Lindsey and Alisa

Present time!

After the party fun Whitney got to open a couple more gifts from Grandma and Grandpa.

Then she needed to exercise because apparently she still had energy left...that girl can go and go and go.

                                    

                                     

Big Birthday Girl

Whitney is 3!  What a big girl.  She is such a blessing in our lives.  So full of life and energy and spunk.  We love her to death!  The day started with her birthday breakfast.  I asked her what she wanted and she came close to me and wispered, "chips".  Hahaha!  She is so funny.  So she had chips and a pop tart for her birthday breakfast.  After school we let her open some of her birthday presents that Grammy and Grandpa Hartsock sent.  She loved that, but then we let her skip her nap, and she loved that idea even more!  For her birthday dinner she wanted "Old McDonalds" so her friends Cole, Kallie and Luke met us there for dinner, to play and to have a cupcake.  I will warn you there is a somewhat graphic picture below of her "ketchup toe".  If you don't like blood, you might not want to proceed.  After "Old McDonalds" we went back home for one last present, a train set.  She loved it and played with for an hour without even looking up.  It might be the best thing we've ever gotten her.  We love you Whitney Grace!