Someone give me the duct tape!

Friday morning is always a busy time in our house.  Friday is the day of our homeschool co-op and the kids are usually bouncing off the walls excited to go play with their friends and go to "school".  It is also a morning where I run around looking like a chicken with my head cut off shouting through the halls "Where are your shoes?  Who spilled the cereal?  Get off your brother.  Did you brush your teeth?  Who fed the dogs?  Why are you licking the floor? (Elliot has been doing this lately and we have no idea why.)  Do you have your backpack?  Why are you still not dressed?  Hurry up, were going to be LATE!!"

This year has been slightly better, I've really been trying to get everything packed the evening before and loaded by the garage door so that I don't run around at the last minute and waste so much time tracking things down.  I also give the two neighbor girls a ride to co-op so they can help us with the nursery kids, so I have been trying to improve on my time management skills to make sure we arrive early enough so they can manage the kids in the gym as we set up.

It all has been going pretty well.  Today we got loaded in the van on-time, I had my lesson all planned out and was looking forward to teaching it, and no one was fighting!  It was going to be a great day!  When we arrived at the church we all went inside and I went to grab the key to unlock all the rooms that we used.  The boys were playing in the entry area and before I knew it Ethan was running up the steps after me shouting "Everett is bleeding!!!".  I could hear Everett crying and it took a second to register but then it hit me "Oh no!!  Seriously!  Not again!!  He just had stitches." I shouted running down the steps.  Everett was sitting on the floor, his hands over his forehead and blood streaming down his face.  He looked up at me, blood running into his eyes and continued to cry.  Blood was everywhere... all in his hair, all over his shirt and starting to drip on the floor.  He had been running, playing with his brothers, and ran smack into the corner of the countertop with his forehead. 

I scooped him up and hurried down the hall, through the dark church to the bathroom, praying it didn't need stitches.  Once we were in the light my heart sank... it was pretty deep and probably needed 1-2 stitches.  BUMMER!!

I called Derrick and he came to pick up Elliot, Ethan stayed at co-op with my friends, and I drove Everett to the doctor to determine if sutures were needed or if we could just get by with glue.  Sure enough, after looking at it, he suggested it to have a few stitches.  Just to get it clean was a difficult task because he still remembered how much he didn't enjoy his last injury repair, so we decided it was best to save him the emotional trauma and try and glue it.  It worked, so we drove back to co-op for the last 20 minutes.  His friends were all so happy to see him and Ethan was relieved that he was ok.

It will take some time to heal, and he will be fine, but this mommy is pretty bummed that he just added scar #2 to such a sweet little face!  I don't know what to do... he is such an active kid.  A friend suggested duct taping him to a chair... hmmmm... maybe she has a good idea.  :)

Everett's first ER visit

(Caution: graphic photos - might not be the best for those with a weak stomach)

Everett had an accident on Wednesday.  He jumped from the nightstand in his room to his bed and ended up smacking his mouth/chin on the headboard of his bed, resulting in 7 stitches (where his top teeth cut through his bottom lip) and 4 to 5 teeth pushed "out of socket", causing the bone which held them in place to fracture.



Before stitches.  Poor little buddy.

After stitches.

His gums are black and hamburger looking, his top front teeth are wiggly and could possibly all fall out, and his lips and face are so swollen and painful.  I feel terrible for him.

After our follow up at the dentist, we discovered the severity of his injury and how he needs to be on baby food for 4-6 weeks to let the bone heal, and even longer until he can eat things with his front teeth, maybe even a year before he can eat an apple.  The poor kid is miserable, irritable and non-complaint, and parenting this 3 year old is definitely difficult right now.  He doesn't understand the extent of his injuries and has been getting really angry at me because of the things we have not been able to do. 

It was pretty heartbreaking when I told him he was not able to continue to do swimming lessons, he kept begging me, crying and pleading until he finally fell asleep.

Notice how swollen his face is in this photo.  It was pretty hard to understand him because he was so swollen.

Today he is doing better, in better spirits and seems to be understanding some, and we have a visit to remove the stitches tomorrow.  Thank you all for your prayers and please continue to pray for him as we go down this road to healing.  Even though his injuries are bad, they could have been much worse and I am very, very thankful for that!!

Although he is injured and in pain, he continues to roll around on the floor with his brothers, jump, bounce, climb, dance around on the furniture, run, hop, roll from here to there, and do everything else I tell him he can't do because he "might bump his mouth/teeth".  There is no keeping him down... he only has one speed that that is "full Everett".

First Visit to the ER

This past Friday, April 4th, Ethan had his first visit to Blank Hospital ER for a forehead laceration.

We had just gotten back from a nice long jog with the whole family, Bailey and Milo included, and Ethan was messing around in the entryway looking outside and being silly. He tripped on the rug, or over his feet (his feet seem to have a mind of their own sometimes), and fell face first into the corner of the baseboard, cutting his forehead open. It made a pretty good "dent" and started bleeding right away. I grabbed a kitchen towel, Derrick grabbed an ice pack and after getting a good look I knew it needed a few stitches. So we hopped in the car and off we went. By the time we got into the car and were on our way, the bleeding had stopped (thank goodness because Ethan didn't want me anywhere close to his forehead to keep ice or a towel on it) and he was finished crying.

When we got to the ER they moved us to the back and a med student came in to look at the laceration. She felt that it needed stitches and was going to have the ER doc take a look at it just to make sure. The doctor came in and cleaned off the cut (this was not a very fun experience for Ethan) and said that it would need a few stitches. They were going to use some Lat-Gel (cotton ball soaked in numbing medicine taped to his forehead) to numb the area so we would have to wait for an hour to get that to take effect, and then they would stitch it.

So we waited, and Ethan was hungry and crabby so the wait was not very pleasant. They brought in a DVD player and put The Fox and The Hound in to watch (since he likes dogs) and we sat and tried to focus on that. (Derrick and I both commented after leaving the ER about how sad that movie was, I didn't remember it being so sad and depressing as a child.)

The doctor came back in with all of her gear and they started to get him ready for stitches. They wrapped him in a sheet to restrain his hands to his body and he instantly got angry! It was very difficult watching him so angry and ticked off, we tried bubbles and songs but he was not interested. A few times he relaxed, but most of the time he was all out screaming and trying to fight. Poor baby.

The doctor put in 4 stitches (two at the top of the V and two at the bottom) and they put a band-aid over it for our trip home. As soon as she let him up from the table, he stopped crying and was ready to leave, if it wasn't for the band-aid and the tear stained face, you would have thought that nothing was wrong with him! It makes be feel a little better to know that he was mostly crying because of being restrained and not because he was in pain... but I still felt terrible for not preventing his fall in the first place, let alone putting him through the "torture" of having stitches.


As soon as we got home Derrick went around the house duct-taping all the corners that Ethan could get hurt on, not very attractive, but it will do. We ate dinner, got PJ's on and Ethan went to bed around 9:30PM.

So, Ethan is healing well, and the stitches come out on Wednesday. I think he forgot about what even happened, and he is back to his normal self, climbing, running and almost falling down a few times here and there. He is becoming very independent and LOVES walking around outside in the grass and on on the sidewalk. He doesn't realize that if he gets going too fast and falls down it is going to really hurt... I guess that will be the next owie he gets, but hopefully it won't include a trip to the ER!