The Weekend of Champions

From broken arms to rocket-ship riders to the GRE to an all-day ER shift...this was the weekend of Champions for the Preece household. It all started Friday when I was in charge of the last lesson for my music class. We chose "Space" as our theme and took rocket ship rides around the room to planets that Carter had made out of construction paper. Classic. That adventure over, I was toying with the idea of hanging out with my friend Alison and her kids or turning on the Diego and attempting to cram a few more vocab words for my GRE's the next day. I opted for the higher, motherly road, and drove to Wellesley to play with Al and the kids. While at the park near their house, Carter fell off a ladder structure and wouldn't stop crying. I didn't witness the fall, as I was changing yet another poopy diaper, but according to witnesses, it wasn't that bad. Like any good parent, I tried to help him ignore the shame and move on, but he wouldn't stop crying. My friend thought it might be a "nursemaid's elbow" where the elbow joint gets out of the socket and they pop it back in. I called our superhero pediatrician and raced over there before the end of the day...praying not to have an ER date. He tried twice to pop it in...thinking it was a "classic" case of nursemaid's elbow. Carter was SCREAMING. Then the other ped. tried to put it back in and thought she heard a pop and that all was good. Carter said it felt better...an we were on our way. I took the kids to the Greek Corner to celebrate, but noticed that Carter still wouldn't use his arm. Hmmmm....not even for the best gyro in Boston. Then Dr. Dad arrived to a tremendously swollen elbow and another call to our pediatricion. And then...it was off to the emergency room.

I tried to sleep, knowing my GRE's were the next morning, but at 1 a.m. when they weren't back and Mike's cell phone was dead, I really got nervous that Carter's elbow had fallen off or the pediatrician's had done permanent damage. Then, at 1:30 a.m. Carter walks in with a cast covering his entire arm. According to Mike, he fell asleep before the cast was put on and woke up on their way out of the hospital saying, "Daddy, when are they going to put that thing on my arm." "Look at your arm, Carter. It's already there!" His eyes went huge and he smiled...cool!

So I took the GRE and Mike worked an entire day in the hospital and all is well. We survived.