Nurse Maid Elbow

I hope I never hear those words again. I'll mention some highlights about our Christmas trip but I'm going to talk about what went on back here at home first. We got back from Boston, after a long 26 hour trip, on Monday afternoon at about 3:30. At 5:02, Calleigh had another nurse maid elbow episode. I specifically noted the time because the pediatrician's office closes at 5:00 and obviously that would have been the swift solution to the problem. Instead, we headed to Centra Care where the wait was up to 2 hours so we landed at the Winter Park ER. What a sight we must have been after our long trip, no shower, same clothes from day before, etc. We were seen in about 10 minutes by what I later found out was a pediatric nurse practitioner. I say later because she never introduced herself...my biggest pet peeves of my visit there. I hate to bust on my own hospital but people, please say who you are!! Anyway, she did the little maneuver and said she heard a pop. The other two times this has happened, Calleigh started using the arm again just about right away. But this time she kept it held at her side and said it was still sore. We gave it some time but she refused to use it. In the meantime, we lined up to get an x-ray (their standard procedure whether you think it's fixed or not) but I vetoed that idea when I realized how many other people where "in line." The head physician of the ER ended up coming in to see us and he tried to pop it back but he thought it was already in. So we ended up just going home with the hopes that a good night's sleep would improve things. Maybe she just thought it was still "broken." Well, I think I got better sleep in the car the night before because she wanted to sleep in our bed and of course, given the circumstances, I let her. That meant I virtually got no sleep and then Aubree woke up during the night to boot. When Calleigh woke up, she unfortunately said it still hurt and wouldn't use it. It was like old times because she made me feed her breakfast...she refused to let go of her left arm with her right arm. But she was in good spirits despite all this. She was resting in my bed while I took a shower and with little else to do but think about things, the first thing she said to me when I got out of the shower was "Mommy, you know, when I get to be a lady, I'm going to have toothpaste and gum." Those are two things she can't have now so apparently she's looking forward to when she can.


Since we still didn't know what was wrong with the arm, I took her over to Jewett for some x-rays. I thought the whole x-ray thing might be a disaster but she actually didn't cry and she let the lady move first her right arm around (they take both for comparison purposes) and then the left. She didn't show any discomfort when the left was moved. So we walk back to the exam room, go in, and then the next thing I know, she starts using the left arm as if nothing had ever happened. It was like a Christmas miracle...if it were still Christmas. I have no idea what happened. The doctor came in and said the x-rays were negative, as we obviously suspected, and that it was possible that when the x-ray tech was moving the arm around, it went back into place. Who knows, I suppose it's possible. All I know is that all's well, it ends well. Two good things did come out of this ordeal at least:

1. Calleigh scored a new baby doll and new Barbie doll at the ER.
2. She actually let the x-ray tech, doctor, and another guy at Jewett who put on a sling (which she promptly removed) talk to her and touch her arm without crying or screaming. Have we turned the corner with this whole "afraid of the doctor" thing? Let's hope so.

So that was Tuesday afternoon and here we are on Friday. I have finally, FINALLY, unpacked and put away the last of the Christmas gifts and other odds and ends. What an incredibly slow process. I could barely see the floor in Aubree's room. But yay for the Sabbath and having a clean house (well, pretty clean anyway)! Last night we went over to Ron & Elaine's for what we call Christmas 2.0. We usually do presents with them on New Year's Eve. Well, Calleigh took on a whole new persona with these presents compared to Christmas morning. This time she was so anxious and kept asking if she could open another present. And she did get some great things with the highlight, as we can tell today, being an Elmo Pet Vet Building Set. Tomorrow, I'm sure it will be something else, perhaps Lincoln Logs.



We've been battling with Calleigh the last few days with the whole picking up your toys thing. We've been very firm with her on picking up a toy once she's done playing with it. One of her other favorite presents is a Melissa & Doug Cookie Set where she can "cut" and decorate the cookies herself. It comes in a canister and I told her she had to put all of the cookies back in before she could do anything else. Of course, she didn't want to do it but after about 15-20 minutes of her just sitting there (she was in my room and I wouldn't let her cross the "line" of the door), she finally relented and picked it up. Mommy 1, Calleigh 0. Then, later in the afternoon, she played with it again and without my prompting her, she picked it up and even straightened out her train (which Duncan does with her every night). So I was feeling pretty good, like this isn't so bad. She really got the message, right?? Well, this morning we were back to where we were before with her adamantly refusing to pick up. Fortunately I was able to start singing a cleaning song from one of her CD's and we worked together to pick stuff up. We'll keep at it and see how it goes.



Aubree is doing great. She slept very well up in Boston, for the most part, although for some reason she woke up at about 6:15 every morning. Thankfully she is back to 7:00 - 7:15 now that we're home. She's also been very consistent with her afternoon nap going between 2 to 2 1/2 hours long. I'm feeding her one solid meal a day and nursing 5 times. I'll probably up it to two solids soon. All I know is that I can't wait until she can start munching on stuff like Cheerios or what have you. We went to Bob Evans for breakfast this morning and she was like a little terror trying to grab everything in sight, no matter what it was, and then either trying to eat it or throw it on the floor. That's a 7-month old for you. She definitely needs a distraction. I wish I could remember when I started giving Calleigh some puffs....Anyway, I've determined that Aubree is behind Calleigh when it comes to gross motor skills. I'm still not completely comfortable with letting her sit by herself without something to protect her in case of a fall. And as for crawling, Calleigh was just starting to creep at this age and by the second week in January, she was officially crawling. Aubree shows virtually no interest in it. I'll be surprised if she's crawling in the next two months. As for sounds, she's adding new ones. She's been saying "da,da,da" for several weeks and yesterday I heard "ma, ma, ma" for the first time. Of course, she's just making the sounds. She's not associating it with me yet.

So....let's talk about Christmas! We had a wonderful time up in Massachusetts with my parents, brothers, sister-in-law, nephew, and the rest of the extended family. We left Thursday afternoon at 2:00, 12/17, and arrived Friday afternoon. It took 22 hours which exceeded my expectations. Once again, the girls and dogs were fantastic. My prayer once we arrived was that it would snow because Christmas is SO much better with snow. And fortunately my prayers were answered on Saturday night. We got about a foot of snow and Calleigh was thrilled! It did make getting to the Pops on Sunday afternoon a bit of an adventure but it was well worth it.






Much of our time was spent shopping since we didn't do any before getting there. Duncan and I are vowing to shop ahead next year so that we have more down time...We usually like to save the shopping because we enjoy it so much but I will say it gets a little hectic now that we have the kids. Thankfully my parents did take Calleigh with them a number of times so that we could shop in peace. It ended up just being the three of them this year going to Edaville Railroad because Duncan caught a cold and wasn't up to it and I needed to do more shopping. Some other fun things that we did do together were taking Calleigh sledding and going to the Enchanted Village at Jordan's Furniture. We also spent a lot of time with Camille and Camden. I sure do miss those guys. Despite his not so good sleeping habits, Camden is a wonderful baby boy and we just love him. Christmas Eve we had the Cases over as usual for fun and games and Aunt Toni, Uncle Terry, and Mimi were there this year too. They also came over on Christmas (after the presents) and Aunt Sherrie and Uncle Kevin showed up so that my mother and her three sisters were together on Christmas for the first time in who knows how long. A great time was had by all and I was sorry to see it all end when we left on Sunday afternoon. Ricky rode along with us and we dropped him off in Maryland. As expected, we hit a ton of holiday traffic. Thankfully it all occurred while Ricky was driving!

A few other notes from Boston..

• Even though several people in the household, like Duncan and Shawn, got colds, the girls never caught it. They must have strong immune systems!
• Calleigh slept in my parent's room since we knew she would be a distraction when Aubree was getting to sleep. It worked out well and Calleigh even got to get into bed with my mother some of the nights. Apparently it didn't take much persuasion..
• Duncan and I celebrated our seventh anniversary on the 22nd by going to the CBS Scene restaurant at Patriot Place sans kids. We officially made it past the "seven year itch." Ha! But seriously, I couldn't ask for a better husband. I love that guy. I thank the Lord every day that I have such a hard working man so that I can be at home with our kids. (And did I mention that he was the one that took down the tree and all the decorations this morning? HUGE help!)
• This isn't directly related to Boston but I have to mention that it's amazing how Calleigh knows so many of the words to Christmas songs. She sings them with gusto and will even move her arms around like she's directing a choir. Her favorite religious song is "Angles We Have Heard on High" (she likes the drawn out Gloria part) and her favorite non-religious song is "Jingle Bell Rock." I did take some good video of her on Christmas Eve when we were all singing together.

Well, I will close off here. It's good to be caught up. And now that Duncan has taught me how upload pictures on here faster, I'm a very happy camper.