Week 221: Snap, Crackle, Pop

More and more often, I feel like I don’t have anything to write about on this blog. Many of the stories about Mandy feel like reruns of Sam’s stories, and sometimes I just feel like I don’t have anything new to report for that week. Occasionally, though, something happens and I know I’ve got to write about it, got to chronicle it, got to share it.

But to my credit, the thought “I should blog about this,” didn’t occur to me until we were on our way home from the emergency room.

Allow me to back up and gesticulate wildly. Sam, Mandy, and I were following our after-dinner routine of playing on the living room floor. Sam has this little pink chair. She likes to capsize it and climb all over it, pretending it’s a mountain, a car, or a car on a mountain. And it just so happened that Mandy, who is learning to join in such games, was sitting on its base, leaning against it at a 45-degree angle with her legs splayed out and slightly raised off the floor. I later had to repeatedly imitate this position and pantomime what came next for the benefit of various hospital staff. Sam climbed to the top of the upturned chair and rolled down, laughing, to land right across Mandy’s splayed legs.

The muffled snapping sound was my first clue that something bad had happened, and twenty minutes of mounting dread and not being able to stop Mandy from crying was the second. We all four loaded up in the minivan and rushed off to the nearby pediatric urgent care facility. There a nice lady terrorized Mandy by poking and prodding her, then made up for it by giving both her and Sammy popcicles, which was the absolute height of the trip for Sam. When held up into a standing position, though, Mandy would not put any weight on her right leg, so the doc told us to take her to the hospital emergency room. So back in the minivan we went.

At the hospital, the doctors took x-rays and confirmed that it was in all likelihood a fracture to her leg, right below the knee. The break actually wasn’t visible on the x-rays, but the doctor there said that wasn’t unusual, and such an injury was called “a toddler’s fracture.” I guess it’s nice that they have a name for it. They said there was a chance that she had just a badly sprained knee, but to be safe they put a splint and cast on it. When asked her opinion, a generally pissed off and tired Mandy would scream and shake her tiny fist at you.

The next day after a night of fitful sleep, Ger took her back to get a permanent cast put on. She chose, of course, bright neon pink. Because that’s the only choice that made sense. Obviously. You’re stupid for even asking, Jamie. I swear, when I asked “Why bright pink?” Geralyn’s response was “Because it will go well with that brown dress of hers.” And besides being a bold fashion statement sure to set the toddler runways on fire –bright, fuschia fire– she sprang for the fiberglass cast that we can at least bathe Mandy in, so that’s nice. And after a few diaper changes where we handled everything with extreme delicacy for fear of bumping the cast and having it explode into a bright pink haze of fiberglass particles, we discovered that the thing is surprisingly durable. Really, you can bang the crap out of it without damaging it or even having Mandy feel a darn thing. Not that we do that, but you can.

Sam, to her credit, seemed to alternate between being contrite for her active role in her sister’s ordeal and being completely oblivious to the whole thing. She knew something was wrong, and she periodically tried to give her little sister hugs and kisses. Usually by reaching across the damaged leg and squeezing as hard as she could, but it was the thought that counted. The rest of the time she chirpped happily about the popcicle that the nice doctor had given her, and that maybe perhaps she could have a blue one next? Or she asked when we could go home and eat some of the popcicles we had there. She never seemed particularly frightened by the hospital or the whole ordeal, except when they came to put the splint on Mandy’s leg and wrap it. This sudden appearance of two big burly men dressed in hospital scrubs and bearing STRANGE THINGS convinced Sam that she had to go back out to the waiting room and study the fish tank immediately.

On the ride back home, though, Sam sat in her car seat, apparently reflecting on the night’s events. In the sleepy silence she spoke up, squeezing each word out like paste form a tube. “If I had been careful, that wouldn’t have happened to Mandy.” I’m not sure if she was parroting or paraphrasing something someone had said to her, but if not then it’s actually kind of a milestone with her. It’s the first time I’ve heard her reason out, using the rule of cause and effect, what a situation would be like if something had not happened. It’s nice to see that kind of mental agility developing, though I wish it had come about under different circumstances.

Not that this whole sibling-induced mishaps thing is without precedence in my family. When I was just a baby, my sister and her stupid friend apparently climbed underneath my crib, lay on their backs, and kicked up at the bottom of my mattress as hard as they could. I was lying on it at the time, so I flew up and arced gracefully across the nursery to crack my head on the side of the dresser several feet away. I harbor no grudge against her for this, however, even though I never have been able to divide by the number eight as a result.

At any rate, Mandy is doing fine now. She can’t stand up with the cast on, but she has learned to crawl a bit. This actually has its advantages, like how we don’t have to put up the baby gates all the time now, and her toenails are easy to trim. The cast comes off in about two and a half weeks. She’s enjoying the additional pampering in the meantime.

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7 thoughts on “Week 221: Snap, Crackle, Pop

  1. Dude. Do I need say anymore? I honestly, honestly feel for you all. This must have been beyond nerve splinting!

  2. Wow, this will be a great story to tell someday…though not quite as spectacular as the story about your sister and her friend kicking you out of your crib. I’m really glad Mandy is okay and wasn’t more seriously injured!
    Annalie, who is three months younger than Sammy, did something today that I noticed as a kind of milestone. She was playing some inexplicable game, holding up her pinkies and counting them in a sing-songy voice. Then she stage-whispered to me, “Mama! Hold up your pinky!” I did so, and she resumed her singing, till a few seconds later I got another whispered command to hold up my other pinky, and she went back to singing. That’s the first time I can remember her using that technique of interrupting herself and whispering to another person to indicate that she’s pausing the flow of her actions. Funny the milestones we remember as parents, isn’t it?

  3. We like to say that that bump on the head explains a lot! πŸ™‚ I do recall however that mom found me hiding in my closet after she found you. I’m sure it was my friend’s idea to see if a baby could fly!

  4. Marla: Thanks. Both Ger and I thought afterwords that it was a lot less stressful than the time we had to take Sam to the ER with a 104-degree fever. Maybe it’s because while a broken leg is terrible, it’s not this horribly unknown, potentially deadly thing going on inside the kid’s body.
    Bethany: Yeah, it’s weird what we notice. A lot of things go unremarked upon, but they’re really important if you stop to think about it.
    Shawn: Yeah, I’ve often wondered how my life might have turned out differently.
    Kevin: Ow. Cute kid, though! Mandy hasn’t fallen down any stairs (Sam did, though), so I guess we’re lucky. We’re careful about keeping safety gates up on the stairs, almost to a psychotic degree.

  5. Whoa. Poor Mandy. I get pretty freaked out by the smallest little bump and bruise, so I canÒ€ℒt even imagine what this must have been like for you.

  6. I haven’t read your blog in so long and I just wanted to browse the kids pics.
    First I have to say I can’t believe how much they’ve grown! They are the cutest kids that I have never met. πŸ™‚
    Second, I had to stop and actually read this entry. It is always the younger sibling! I think we all have a story to tell. I am the youngest of 3. We are all six years apart. When I was about 8 years old I finally realized that the crease in my forehead wasn’t something everyone had. Turns out I had stiches there. How interesting! I never knew! When I was about Mandy’s age my brother twirled me around by the arms in the living room and let go. I flew face first into the TV set. Yep, and that’s not the only scar my bro has given me. πŸ™‚ Let’s hope this is it for Mandy. No more broken bones!!!

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