Disaster Strikes

We had big plans yesterday. It was the big Easter egg hunt on Decatur Square, and we decided we were going to get going early and walk to the Square via the post office, where we were going to try to get Elsa's passport. (No, we don't currently have plans to leave the country, but even though children under 18 do not need identification to fly within the US, we thought we would go ahead and get her a passport prior to our trip to California so that we would then have it if in fact we do decide to leave the country in the coming years.) The walk to the post office was nice, though a little chilly due to the wind, but the attempt to get the passport quickly became a failed mission. I was not aware that you now have to have an appointment to get a passport on a Saturday. Since we then had some extra time to kill before the Easter bunny was scheduled to arrive, we decided to head over to the library and spent some time in the children's area, looking at books, sitting in chairs, and making small talk with strangers and their little ones.

Just in the past week, Elsa has become attached to a stuffed bunny my parents gave her around Easter last year. It is the same one she enjoyed singing with when she was seven or eight months old. The singing has ceased -- now she sometimes enjoys dancing to the music. Anyway, she woke up from her nap one day and was pointing down at it from her crib, asking for the "un-nee." Since then she has asked for it quite often and likes to bring it with her sometimes when we leave the house. Considering the timing of this, it has been fun to try to play up the fact that we were going to go see the Easter bunny. So we were on the Square even a little before 10:30, greatly anticipating the bunny's arrival. We never saw the bunny. Actually, I think I might have caught a glimpse of it at one point -- a woman dressed up in a rather sorry-looking bunny suit -- but I really thought it was just some crazy mom dressed up for Easter. It was definitely not what I was expecting, which was something more on the Deepo costume scale, I suppose. Oh well. Elsa didn't seem too disappointed. She was much more interested in going up and down the stairs that surround the Square. She also had fun introducing herself to Mr. Tooth. Why was there a person dressed up as a tooth at an Easter egg hunt? Who knows. But Elsa had fun with him nonetheless. And his costume was much more on the Deepo scale.

So, no bunny, but we did participate in the Easter egg hunt after waiting around in the cold wind for what seemed like forever. Thankfully Elsa was able to enjoy an oatmeal raisin cookie, handed out by a local bank, while waiting. The hunt drew a decent crowd, so with Elsa's hesitation regarding new things, I was not sure how this would go down. They counted down to the start, and then I went ahead and just placed Elsa in the grass. I think she was overwhelmed by all the people and craziness at first, and was not sure what to do, so she cried some until I showed her that we could pick up the candy eggs and put them in her basket. She caught on fairly quickly and had fun putting a few in the basket and then taking them all out again.

Here is a bit of video from the event. The irony of my last line is quite great, which you will see as you read along (if you can make it through!).

After the hunt, we headed back home, stopping by Chick-fil-A for a bite to eat.

We had plans yesterday evening to go over to the house of some friends from church who are headed to India in the near future for missionary work. We were looking forward to hanging out with them and hearing more about what is in store for their future and just generally catching up, as it had been awhile since we were all able to be together. Elsa was very intrigued with their fabulous playset, and immediately wanted to swing. She has also been obsessed with slides recently. There is one at the gym that she goes up and down regularly, and it is a constant pull between the slides and the swings at every park we go to. Jarrett stood at the top of our friends' playset with Elsa and put her down one of the slides, which seemed very fast and had a few bumps, so she even caught a little air as she flew down into my arms. It frightened me a bit, so we only did it a couple of more times. We also let her go down their enclosed, tube-like slide, but she wasn't so fond of that one.

We took a break from the playset and had some yummy chips and various dips (Elsa very much enjoyed the cheese dip), and soon she was asking to swing again. So I took her down and let her swing. Then she wanted to slide. This time I decided to go down the slide with her. We did this a couple of times, and Elsa was laughing and thought it was great. I still didn't particularly like this slide, even though I was going down with her. It was even fast with me going down it. So I tried to distract her by running around in the grass, which she thought was pretty great for awhile. Then it was: "Again." "More, please." Who can resist that sweet voice? So I told her we would go down once more and then go back up to the house. She laughed coming down, but at the bottom she started crying. I tried to put her down on the ground, but she wouldn't stand up. The crying became more hysteric, and I took her over to the grass and tried to figure out what was wrong. I sat her in the grass, and she just kind of slumped my direction but wouldn't really try to get up and come to me, which seemed weird. I finally yelled up to Jarrett, who was chatting on the deck, that I thought Elsa broke her leg. You should have seen Jarrett's face. I'm sure it was partly caused by the sound of my panic-stricken voice, but his face just dropped, he froze, and then he bolted down the stairs toward us. There was nothing obviously wrong with her legs when just looking at them, but she certainly did not want to put weight on either one and she just kept crying. I could not get her to stop no matter what I tried. None of the tricks worked: singing, toy cars, balls, even television. Her bunny helped a little -- she was holding onto it for dear life -- but she also wanted me, and only me, to hold her. I knew something was not right. So we finally just decided we needed to go and headed to the ER for the second time in our child's life.

She calmed down in the car. Call me a bad parent, but I just could not bear putting her in the car seat, so I held her, her chest to mine, her head on my shoulder, in the back seat. She wasn't crying at all about halfway through the car ride, so I was starting to question what we were doing by the time we got to the ER. Once there, though, I tried to get her to stand up on my lap, but she still refused to bear any weight. She continued to be calm in the ER waiting room and while we checked in (except for when we had to weigh her and take her bunny away during that process), and even got to the point where she was smiling and chatting and laughing. I again questioned why we were there. But at one point she asked to get down and walk, and again once she tried, she wouldn't bear weight, especially on her right leg. She could move both feet and her ankles and could get up on her knees, so that made us think that if anything was broken, it was definitely her lower-right leg.

To make a long story at least a bit shorter, it turns out we were right. They did an x-ray, and after much waiting we found out that she has an oblique fracture of her right tibia. And because toddlers can't wield crutches, yet still move around a lot, they had to put a splint on the entire length of her right leg. You can imagine how frustrated this is making her. All she wants to ever do is walk, and now she can't even crawl. I can tell this is going to be a rather difficult few weeks, month, or however long it is going to be before her leg is free again. We will find out more this week when we get her in to a pediatric orthopedist. It is very possible they will replace the splint with a full-on cast, but really aside from going through the actual process of putting the cast on, I don't see how that will make things any worse. The splint is nearly like a cast. So right now her leg is immobilized and we are dealing with any pain with children's acetaminophen.

Overall, Elsa dealt with everything last night like a trooper. I was amazed (as were some of the nurses) that she did not cry more than she did. I think her daddy and I are still recovering from the drops of adrenaline we each received yesterday. The good news is that toddlers recover really well from these types of injuries, and thankfully (so very thankfully) this was not the sort of break that required setting of the bones or surgery or anything of that sort. We will all be inconvenienced for a period of time, but everything will be okay. For that, we are certainly so very happy.

I will leave you with a couple of shots of our brave little girl from this morning: