In the last two weeks we've all had colds of varying severity, Will developed pink eye in one eye and then the other, and Hallie broke her collarbone.
The colds are to be expected. Pink eye is a right-of-passage for preschoolers (I had it when I was three or four, and vividly remember lying across my mom's lap and crying while she tried to ease drops of medicine into my infected eye). But a broken collarbone? In that teeny, tiny little pip-squeak of a thing? Now THAT I wasn't expecting.
On the Sunday night before Christmas Hallie slipped and fell - sideways - off one of our kitchen stools. It happened in slow-motion, really - I watched her tip to the side and slip, and then I saw both of her legs fly into the air and drop below the counter. (If she hadn't broken her collarbone during the fall it would have been quite the comedic scene.) By the time I'd run around to her side of the counter, she was lying on her back on the floor, whimpering. Not crying, just whimpering.
She guarded her shoulder for the rest of the evening, but I wasn't terribly worried.
The next morning, Will woke up with pink eye and I called the doc to schedule an appointment for later that day. I decided that since I was already heading to the doctor's office, I might as well have Hallie looked at too. The nurse practitioner (our doc wasn't available that morning) felt Hallie's shoulder, tested her strength, and asked her to move her arms in a variety of ways. Apparently Hallie did well, because the nurse practitioner deemed her in good shape. Though I'm sure she didn't mean to, the NP made me feel a little paranoid for bringing Hallie in, which rubbed me the wrong way because I'm as far from a paranoid mom as they come - following in my mom's footsteps, I'm a "take two Ibuprofen and put ice on it" kind of gal.
We went about our merry way, going to school on Tuesday, and driving to Nebraska on Tuesday and Wednesday. But on Thursday afternoon, when Hallie was still complaining of pain and guarding her shoulder and after Doctor Grandpa and Physical Therapist Neighbor/Friend/Jake each examined her, we headed to a doctor friend of the family for an x-ray. Sure enough, not only was Hallie's collarbone broken, it was displaced in a way that looked terribly painful.
The funniest thing about all this is that Hallie hardly complained AT ALL. She was happy and smily and funny EXCEPT when someone picked her up and put upward pressure underneath her arms. Tom felt a bit sheepish about the Vicodin regimen, week off work, and 12+ week recovery he needed after he broke his collarbone last April...
Hallie was also happy and smily and funny at the doctor's office - she charmed the pants off everyone who worked there, scoring herself a number of new friends and about 25 stickers that she stuck all over her bare chest while wandering the halls of the office with her pants falling off her teeny butt.
There weren't slings and/or apparatuses small enough to splint Hallie's collarbone, but that didn't really matter because she was doing a great job of splinting and guarding her arm on her own, and quite frankly, she wasn't all that interested in wearing either anyway. That is until Grandma Susie fashioned her a sling out of pink toole. This was the only sling my little princess would wear.
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