Adventures in Parenting

I envy those with long relaxing weekends. I really do. Ours seemed to be action-packed full of activities, emergencies, and constant things to do and get done.

Brad decided he's going to undertake a remodel job of our (master) bathroom. Master bath makes it sound all nice. Its really a tiny tiny 2nd bathroom in our house. But it has some serious issues. A crack in the tub. Plumbing problems. Mold. You name it. Instead of hiring someone to just come in and do it...he decided he wanted to do it himself. *sigh*.. So here goes!

This weekend, his spare time (you'll know more on that later!) consisted of totally and completely gutting the bathroom. The sink is gone, the cabinets are gone, the sheetrock, the toilet, everything. All that's left as I type this is the tub...which will be gone soon as well, which he intends to begin cutting out soon. Next up - the remodel begins. Give me patience...

In the meantime, I wanted to get started on some gardening. I wanted to get some things in the ground (I feel like I'm already behind in my normal timeframe...but eh, probably not so much). So we make a trip to Lowe's. While he's scoping out new bathroom cabinets for cheap (he found one with a sink and everything for $40!), I'm in the garden section selecting plants.

We come home Saturday morning and get a start to tilling up the garden and planting things. The girls are playing in the backyard. Actually they were jumping on the trampoline. All is right with the world. Then Brenna starts crying. And crying. And crying. Brad makes it to the trampoline first and crawls inside, scooping her up. She is saying her leg hurts. I get over there and stand at the entrance and tell her to come to me and we'll go inside and look at it. He helps her stand up and she immediately falls, her leg just buckling under her. Uh oh. Not good. So we get her inside, everything moves ok, but she can put absolutely no weight on it. She can't stand. She can't walk. Nothing. So off we go to urgent care, just knowing its broken.

Luckily, the xray showed it is not in fact broken. WHEW! She suffered a contusion on her bone and the dr said she probably wouldn't be able to walk well, if at all for a couple of days. THAT I can live with. A couple days is much better than a couple of months in a cast!

Here's my sweet girl getting ready for the xray. Such a drastic difference from the last xray! She just laid there and was completely brave through the whole ordeal! She even looks happy here?

Anyway, so we get back home, we're catering to her, of course, having to pick her up and carry her where she wants to go and take her whatever she needs or wants. You may think she was milking it, but on the couple occassions where she forgot about it and tried to stand up, she completely fell over. So it was hurting her pretty bad.

Later in the day, Brooke (who felt horrible for the whole accident - she might've been the bearer of fault..we think she accidentally landed on Brenna's leg on one jump) carried Brenna to go potty. A few minutes later she came running out... "Mommy! Daddy! Come quick! You've GOT to see this! Brenna is WALKING! She can walk! She can walk!" We go inside and see Brenna hobbling a few steps in the living room, exclaiming so excitedly, "Daddy! Mommy! LOOK! I can walk! I'm walking! I'm really really walking!" I wanted to scream out.... "It's a Christmas miracle!" LOL They were so cute.

Today she is a little better. A little more walking..not a lot and not good. She hobbles a few steps at a time though and is not so irritable, so definitely better. Whew!

The next story deals with Brooke and her earring drama. She got her ears pierced back in the fall. She wore them for quite some time, changing them in and out regularly..every few days in fact. Then one day, we tried to get a particular pair of earrings out and one side would not come out. It was stuck. It would turn, but it wouldn't come out. It was the strangest thing. Brooke, though, in true form, took to throwing a fit, screaming and not letting us touch it hardly. So finally (to make a very long story shorter), we had to hold her down and literally yank it out. Then she would not let us put another in. We tried. But again, it got stuck. I couldn't get it in. And it didn't help that she was very upset and just wanted to be done with earrings. So she was. We left them out. End of story. Not pleasant. We didn't talk about it. I wasn't happy about it to say the least. But whatever...it was over. And the earrings went up in the closet.

Until today. 2-3 weeks later. I noticed a couple days ago, this same ear was a little red. I thought maybe she had been messing with it? But then this morning she gets up and it is REALLY red, really swollen and actually has a infected look to it on the backside - even pussy (sorry for lack of a better non-gross sounding term). I knew it was infected. Didn't know why or how this late after all of it. But I knew it was infected. So decision time. Do we force her to let us try to squeeze it and 'pop' it and get it to drain? Or do we take her in to the dr and let them deal with it? Both of which would be extremely unpleasant. While we thought, we let her go about her day and just told her to put some neosporin on it regularly. Which she did. We worked in the yard some this morning. Then afterwards, while washing hands, I told her I wanted her to clean it real good with soap and water (she still won't let us come near it!). Then as she was washing it, I told her to try to squeeze it so the soap will get inside good (but my ulterior motive was to try to get her to pop it herself). She did squeeze. Then I told her to squeeze it as hard as she could to get it real clean. And when she did.... lo and behold... out popped the back to an earring! :-O One that apparently had been lodged INSIDE her ear for the last 2-3 weeks, starting way back when when we couldn't figure out why that earring wouldn't come out. This is why! The back was keeping it stuck! And why another earring wouldn't go in! There was a backing lodged inside keeping it from going through!

Here's the culprit...

Tiny little thing. But really big if you consider the size of her ear, and then consider the size of that tiny tiny pinhole the earrings go through!

She was amazed. As was I. She was so happy. She kept telling us the rest of the day how great her ear felt now (she had been noticing it for the last several days at least and was scared to tell us!). And she was so proud of herself for getting it out herself. Heck, I was too! I still can't believe that thing was inside her ear! She even called a couple of people (one of them being her teacher at school..haha!) to tell them of the event. :)

Anyway, in between all the catastrophes this weekend, we also got to work on the garden and flowerbeds. Here's the girls helping (this was pre leg accident ;)

The garden has been done. We did a lot less this year than last year. Mainly because we always have more produce than what we can actually use!

Brooke picked out what she wanted in her flowerbed this year - and she wanted to try grapes and blueberries. Ok? Why not?

The fruit trees are all blooming and looking nice!

The orange tree has tons of little oranges on it.

The peach tree has half a dozen or so peaches going strong.

I could've swore the plum tree had a couple too, but couldn't find them when I went to take the picture. So here it is blooming anyway.

The apple trees are definitely not dead, though they haven't started to bloom yet. If I remember right from last year, they bloom a lot later, so we'll keep an eye out in the coming weeks.

In the flowerbeds, we fixed up all the beds nice again. Only a couple things died in the hard freeze this year. But we ended up with lots of pretties too!

Here's hoping our week of Spring Break is a lot more relaxing!