Snapshots: 11/2007

For the first time since we've been in Colorado, our church did not do a harvest festival on Halloween night this year. I was very bummed when I learned this was the case, but it turns out, it was one of the best things that could have happened. Tim didn't spend a week rounding up enough cardboard to make a crawl through maze in the student center, and better yet, I didn't have to take the kids out all by myself while he was stuck supervising high schoolers. This year, Halloween was actually a family affair. We just decided we'd take the kids to a different church for a harvest festival experience! I think I was most excited about the fact that Tim was coming with us. Anyway, it turned out to be a lot of fun- even more fun than the our church's usual production. The church we went to was much bigger, and so there was so much more there and it was so much more spread out. There were at least 4 bounce houses, more games than we could count, several live shows, balloon men, and all kinds of things we didn't even get a chance to see. And best of all, we didn't even come home with that much candy! (Although what we did collect was quickly gone because every time Sophia poops in the potty she would ask to pick something out of her bucket! I figured that was a good way to get rid of the little bit we did have, so I didn't bother to argue!)

So you might be asking, "What about the nurse maid elbow?" Let me tell you, because Tim and I are new experts on the subject. Towards the end of the night, Sophia was freaking out about her arm. We had no idea what she was talking abut, but we did see a couple of spots that looked maybe like a little rash starting. She was overly tired, so we didn't know how much that was contributing to the situation, but she was crying about her arm when I took her out of her carseat, she didn't want to put it through her pajamas, and basically just held it into her tummy. The next morning when we were debating what to do about the arm that she still wasn't using, she was telling us that it hurt from holding Daddy's hand. Tim said, "She was trying to pull away from me and I was having to hold on pretty tightly." We got her into the doctor later that morning, and our pediatrician diagnosis was "nurse maid elbow". Basically what happened is that the ligaments across her elbow got shifted out of place. They had mostly moved back into place by the time we got to the doctor, but she said she did feel a little click in one of her last movements, so the doctor figured that was the final "adjustment" to move the ligaments back to where they belong. We were kind of sweating how we were going to explain when Sophia said that her arm hurt from holding Daddy's hand, but before we even got that far, the Dr. told us that this commonly happens when toddlers are holding their parent's hands and try to pull away! So, consider it lesson learned!