Wow...Time Flies

Has it really been three months since I blogged? Why yes, yes it has. Well...here is a quick recap of the past few months for those of you who haven't already died of shock.

May

This month consisted of some small fun family activities like a Cinco de Mayo party at my friend Jenna's house. The boys had fun hitting the pinata to death and of course loved the candy.
Our town also had a fair where we met up with our friends and rode on some fun little kiddie rides. I love that we live close to a huge city, but our town still feels small.






Tanner's birthday was this month, and we had fun celebrating his BIG three ooooooohhhhh. He's an old man, but we still love him. :-) Oh, and we had our first backyard family picnic. Andrew eating his first corn-on-the cob...priceless.

That's IBC Rootbeer people...trust me.

June

This month of this year will forever live in infamy as the time of "Clark's finger" accident. WARNING: Graphic details below...

So I took the boys down to my sister Tricia's house to hang with her for the week since both of our husband's were out of town. My parents came to visit for part of it, but had left before the accident occurred a few days later. It was Thursday, and we were going to leave later in the afternoon to drive back home. Tricia had an appointment to get her haircut in the morning and so I offered to watch the four youngest (JB, Izzy, Clark, and Andrew) while she went to get it cut. All of the kids were having a grand time dancing to music in my sister's bedroom and I was finishing burning a cd for me to listen to on the way home when I heard this BANG! (door slamming) and then the most horrible blood curdling scream I have ever heard from my child. I went out to find him and he met me just inside the door where he had slammed his left pinky finger (later we realized he had actually slammed in in the hinge of the door). When I looked down, the tip of his finger was literally hanging off...and blood...everywhere. I pulled him into the bathroom and put some pressure at the base of his finger to try to stop the bleeding. He was crying but not hysterically so...and I just remember he kept saying "I broke my finger off mom...it's bleeding"...over and over again. I didn't know what to do, I was home by myself with four kids under the age of 5. So...I made my first ever phone call to 9-1-1. I tried to act like everything was okay and was 'just calling' to see what they 'recommended' I do with an almost severed finger. I can't decide if downplaying it is better or worse than if I had been hysterical, but regardless, they said to stay put and the paramedics would be there soon. We waited about 5 mins, and they were at the doorstep. We had a fire truck and an ambulance and 4 people come in to help. They taped up Clark's finger as well as they could and said I could take him to the hospital by myself or they could take him in the ambulance. Thankfully, my sister's neighbor came over to see if everything was okay and offered to stay with the other children until my sister could get home from the hair salon. I hopped in the car with Clark and he liked seeing the ambulance and fire truck, but I think he was in a little shock by this time. He was pretty quiet on the way to the hospital.

Once we arrived at the ER, they saw us very quickly. They took x-rays of his finger and quickly realized that he had an open fracture. So the very tip of the bone in his finger was fractured which makes sense since the tip was literally hanging on my a millimeter or two. They called in a finger surgeon from outside the hospital to come in and stitch it up, which I was very grateful for. They sedated Clark in order to stitch him up...which was C-R-A-Z-Y. His eyes were open but nobody was home. Eventually they closed his eyes for him and I watched with fascination as they sewed his finger back on. Stuff like that does not really bother me and I am just amazed that doctors can do what he did and Clark's finger would be as good as new in a few weeks. There was only a slight concern about the tip of his finger necrotizing from a possible lack of blood circulation back into the tip, but the surgeon seemed very optimistic.

Soon enough, they were pulling Clark out of sedation and boy was he a ham coming out of it. He was saying stuff like "Mom, your in charge, I not in charge" with his eyes half closed. By the end of everything the doctors and nurses loved Clark and said how great he had dealt with everything. They asked him what color wrap he wanted for his hand and he insisted on red, since it is the "the color of bloody". GREAT. Morbid much?

Suffice it to say, we didn't go home until the NEXT day and Clark got by pretty well just using one hand. In fact, I think he quite liked showing off his hand to anyone who would look and listen. The next week he stuck his hand in a potted plant I had, and he got his gauze wet, so I had to take him into the dr. to make sure it hadn't soaked through to his finger. While she unwrapped it, I thought Clark was going to make me go deaf, he was screaming so loud and was so upset. This surprised me after how well he acted in the ER before, but I soon realized that he had some emotional issues about seeing his finger again like it was. We had two nights of him waking up at numerous times with bad dreams about his hand. It was actually really sad. After ten days we had to go into a finger specialist to check the finger and Clark did pretty well. Once he actually saw how well his finger had healed, he was a total happy camper. The doctor gave him a lollipop and then after Clark had taken a few licks the doctor jokingly said "Can I have a lick?" Clark looked at him a little quizzically and then reached his hand out to give the doctor a lick. The dr. started cracking up laughing and said in all his years of practice he had never had a child so willingly share his lollipop.

So it has now been just two months since the accident and Clark's finger is completely healed and a new fingernail has almost grown all the way back. Success! Although I can't say that Tricia has had as much success getting the blood out of her carpet. Sorry dude.

After all that, I have NO picture to show for it. I don't know what was wrong with us. We never took a picture of him with his big fat red gauze covered fist. It was a total non-think.

Stay tuned tomorrow for July and August recaps!