Friday, March 27, 2009

Oh Geez...where do I begin?

Alright...I know it's been longer then I promised since my last update, no shocker there. This week has been...well a bit crazy. It started out pretty normal, Lorelai and I took a long walk on Monday around the neighborhood. I'm trying to get the lay of the land and find out where a few of the women I go to church with live, and also get some exercise...sitting around the house just ain't doing it for me! I was great at going for walks in SC....but it wasn't cold there and there weren't any hills the size of Mt. Everest that I had to climb. Okay...I exaggerate, but I live in a little valley at the bottom of like 3 hills so...lol if I want to go anywhere, no matter which direction, I have to climb a big hill to get out. Its daunting. But I do it occasionally. :) Erick came home Monday night and said that he was going to be working overnight Tuesday and Wednesday and then have Thursday night off in prep for going back to days on Friday. Well, Tuesday night passed, and he comes home Wednesday morning with the news that they finished what needed to be done on Tuesday so he goes back to work on Thursday morning. He went to bed, I went about my normal duties. About 8 or 8:30, Lorelai had a poopy diaper, and I don't usually let her sit in those, so we went up stairs to change and then, on the way down the stairs one of my worst nightmares came true, I slipped somehow on the third step from the bottom, and with Lorelai in my arms we both tumbled down the remaining stairs and landed on the cold hard floor at the bottom.

Well...of course we both were a bit shocked, Lorelai started screaming after a beat, I just held her and rocked her and tried not to panic, as I knew I had landed on her leg, right on the corner of the stair. I gently examined her leg, but there wasn't any obvious breakage, but she wasn't moving it either, so I picked us up, held her and rocked her until she stopped crying, and then took a moment to decide what to do. Erick was upstairs sleeping, I was actually kind of surprised that he hadn't come down to check on us with all of the racket, but I needed to let him know what happened and see if he felt we should go to the hospital. So I braved the stairs again, and took Lorelai upstairs, woke Erick up, told him what had happened, and when he reached out and barely touched her leg, she screamed like a banshee again and that kind of sealed the deal for us. So we packed ourselves up and headed to the emergency room.When I put her in her car seat, I did notice that the leg I landed on was quite a bit warmer then her other leg, but as soon as we put her in she started kicking both legs like normal, so I really wasn't sure.

We get to the hospital, we're all checked in, and the nurse comes and looks at her. At this point she's happy and playing, moving both legs apparently fine, there's no bruising and not much swelling, though its a bit hard to tell with how chunky she is, so the nurse tells us she's not going to order and x-ray, that we're just gonna wait for the Dr. Well, just after the nurse leaves the room Lorelai kicks both her legs enthusiastically and hit my thigh, and screams at the top of her lungs again...so I'm thinking, man I'm going to request an x-ray even if the Dr. doesn't think she needs one. The Dr. comes in and starts examining her, and she starts to cry, so he asks if she stands or does any kind of jumping, and we're like...yes, ye she does. (The Jumperoo is her favorite place to be for goodness sake!) So he tells us to stand her up and see if she'll jump, so we do but she only stands on her left leg, and holds her right leg far up from the table. So he orders and x-ray.

2 hours later and we find out she does indeed have a fracture in her right tibia, just above her ankle. They put her leg in a splint, and let us know that we need to call her Dr. so we can get an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon so that they can put her in a cast. The ER Dr. estimated she'd be in a cast for about a month.

::Sigh:: We had an appointment with our Dr. yesterday at the Navy hospital, and there is no one close that does Orthopedic for 6 month-olds, its pretty rare for a baby to break a bone seeing as their bones are like rubber, so we have an appointment at Yale Hospital in New Haven on Monday at 2. I promise I'll update more with that after her appointment.

I'm okay, I didn't hurt myself any worse then a little bit of a backache yesterday. Emotionally though I'm kinda...eh. I know its not my fault, it was an accident and accidents do happen, but every time I look at her little splinted leg I relive the fall in my head, and the Dr. yesterday was all like...how in the world did you break her leg, do you know how hard it is to break a baby's bones? you must have landed pretty hard... and I'm thinking...well,
you have a 250 lb weight land on your leg on the corner of a stair and see how you fare! I mean its probably a blessing that she is as young as she is or the damage would probably be alot worse! But the nurses at the Navy hospital were all really nice, one nurse told me about how her daughter and granddaughter had the same kind of fall a few years back and her granddaughter had to be put in a cast, and the kid hardly even knew she had it on, and another nurse told me how her 5-year-old had just fallen down the stairs a few days ago and was all bruised up...you know trying to let me know that that kind of accident happens to everyone. It made me feel a little bit better but still...my baby's in a splint and soon a cast, and its all my fault. I mean she should be learning how to crawl and exploring her world, but instead she can't even roll over both ways anymore! Can't change that fact now, can ya?

Anway...I have some pictures of her x-rays. I'll explain them underneith each photo. On the lighter side, I did finally get my own car yesterday. Its a 2008 Toyota Matrix, which is a wagon. Its a good car, only has 7 k on it, fits Lorelai's carseat alot better then the Focus. Its not as big as we origionally wanted to go, but it was a practically brand new car that was in our price range so...we got it. Erick, of course, is worrying over how the extra car-payment is going to affect our finances...he's such a worry wort. We have more then enough money to fit another car payment into our budget, but then again I'm the one who actually does our budget so, I'm not stressed. And it gives me the freedom I've been craving here. Lorelai and I are going to go to the mall today and walk around. Since she's pretty immobile she's antsy. She cann't do her jumperoo and she gets bored playing with her toys, and I cann't carry her around all of the time because I'm not supposed to let the leg dangle too much so...lol we need a little it more stimulation then my house can give at this moment!

Anyway...I've written a book so I'm gonna go now! Love to you all!

jen

Side View

The fracture is just across from the big R...you can see the little shift in the white part of the outside of her bone

Front View

The fracture is just above the R...you can see the little dark spot that looks like a hair on the picture...hence "hair-line fracture" :)

Pretty New car :)

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hello All

Well...I thought it was about time that I updated again...lol I got in the habit of not updating regularly and it's easy to stay in that habit!!

All is well in CT. Erick is working on his boat now and he LOVES it. His boat is in dry-dock for the next couple of months to do some maintenance ( Heavenly Father is really taking care of this family let me tell you!) and they had to drive the boat down the river a little to it's new docking station. He came home and was like " I got my first boat ride today!!" all proud and excited. For any of you that know how enthusiastic Erick is, I'm sure you can imagine how cute it was. :) He is in the process of trying to qualify to stand watch, so I'm sure that his hours will get crazier, but for the last two weeks he's been working 6am to 6pm, which I have no complaints about that! He really likes the crew he works with, and his LPO is really nice I guess so....we're doing really well!

The Ward here is great, they have really taken us in and made us feel at home. We're lucky, Sariah Finn, a friend of ours from SC, her family is located up here and they have really taken us in and its been great, they're really great people. Now I know where Sariah gets it from!

Lorelai is doing well. Typical 6 month old I think. :) She can kind of sit on her own, when she wants to put the effort in, otherwise she just lets herself fall to her side and rolls onto her back, which is her prefered position. She really likes her jumperoo, to the point that when she's not in it and your holding her she would rather be jumping up and down on your lap or standing then sitting. No teeth yet but....wow teething pains are not so fun! Her bad teething days are coming alot more frequently then they have been...more like every other day then once a week now. She had a really painful day on Sunday, Monday was okay, but then she started up again yesterday afternoon. She looks alright this morning, but who knows what the afternoon will bring!I hope they come soon, for her sake!

I tried to get a video of her flailing around on the ground on her tummy yesterday, I'm guessing in an attempt to crawl, but she turned over almost immeadiatly. I'm gonna post it anyway, it looks like iIgot a cute smile in the beginning. :)

Oh and...

So, here's how this game works-the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, a handmade gift/treat from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise! The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going (or be lazy and copy and paste like I did).Then come back, let me know you're going to play and sit back andanticipate the arrival of your gift! (But don't feel like if you comment that you have to do this. If you want to try it out, just let me know in the comments and I will hook you up.)


love you all!
Jen

Monday, March 9, 2009

Our New Abode

So I figured I would get a few pictures of our new home up here for u guys to see. Its a little bit different from the one in South Carolina, and it took us a while to set up...who am I kidding we're still setting up! But here are a few pics. Oh and another video or Lorelai, just for fun!

Toodles!
Jen

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Taking So long!!

Man...I can't decide if it's my blog or if its my computer but I'm going crazy trying to get my blog changed again! We all know how I have a habit of changing blog backgrounds and colors frequently, and because I haven't been on in a while, of course I wanted to do it again. Only it won't let me change the colors of my fonts and its freaking annoying!! ::Sigh:: maybe it'll let me do it in a day or two!

Anywhoodle...well I'm back! And we have the internet! And I have pictures and videos of Lorelai from our little month's vacation. Probably won't get them all on here right this moment but...I figure a little here a little there, you'll get them all eventually!

So here's a small video from yesterday to tied you over until the next time I post ( which will be much sooner I promise!)

Also...here's a question for any of you devoted readers: cloth diapers or not? We're using disposables right now but thinking seriously about switching... any opinions?

ttfn!
Jen