You may have read some of my references to our “monthly ER trips” in previous posts. Well, the trip, or should I say trips, that got the most “attention” was the ones we had to make for Audrey over Memorial Day weekend. We had been invited over to a friend’s house for dinner and the night started off great. I should also note that just 4 days prior, we had made a trip to the hospital (we were lucky enough to get an “immediate appointment”) for Luke.
He had tumbled off one of those little sit and scoot things at the RAC and some how face-planted and bit through his lip. I wasn’t there, but knowing how mouths bleed and hearing Ann’s description of the events, it was pretty amazing with regard to the apathy people and workers at the RAC displayed. Picture this, kid hysterically screaming, blood all over his face (rubbing hands in mouth and smearing on face), blood all over his shirt, blood all over Ann’s shirt and face, I mean it probably looked like Freddy Kruger got a hold of them. Still, as Ann was frantically trying to get a clean wet rag and some ice, workers kind of nonchalantly hinted that she could “probably go buy a bottle of pop up in the restaurant if she needed something cold.” So of course, Ann scrambles up to the café and while still having blood all over and a screaming baby, two ladies in line proceeded to ignore them and instead hold their place in line and made their order…asking for little sample of soup here, description of entre there…by this point Ann was so beside herself with astonishment, she just bit her tongue (pun intended) and waited.
Well, to make a long story short, I was called home to take Luke to the hospital just to make sure they didn’t want to do any stitches. To the naïve eye (read, mine), it looked pretty bad. I’m still “wondering” why I got sent to the hospital with the ‘beat up kid’…but I digress. The doctor asks, “So how did he do it?”…”He fell off this bike type thing”…”Did he have a helmet on?”…as I hesitated envisioning Luke on a sit scooter about 7” high rolling around on a carpeted floor, contemplating how good the idea of permanently suiting up Luke with a helmet sounded…the doctor took my hesitation as “no” and proceeded to scold…”He really should have one on you know!” I explained the situation and she seemed to buy it. Good news was that there was no stitches. So that was trip one.
Back to Memorial Day…Audrey and Josh were playing on a Rainbow play system with their friends (ironic part about that is that we had just purchased one and it was going to be installed 2 days later). I had stepped inside to help out with Luke and anything else when Audrey is carried in by our friend balling hysterically. At first site, this didn’t alarm me too much. I’ve seen Audrey turn on the theatrics before. 
Well, we were informed that Audrey had attempted to jump off the landing in the play system (probably 5+ feet up) and in doing so clipped her foot on the ladder and basically swan dived into the ground, putting her hands out to stop herself. OK, I was a bit more concerned now. After Audrey couldn’t settle down for a while, we decided to have Ann take her in (hey, we have to mix it up) to find out she broke her arm (note the singular). She came home casted up in a purple cast and was in pretty good spirits.
So, what does the title of the post mean? The next day, during toy pick up time, Audrey’s wheels start turning. “Just so you know, I don’t think I can really pick up toys since I have a broken arm.” She’s always getting out of picking up toys some how and most times it revolves around some sort of “injury” that happens when picking up (i.e. stub toe, stepped on toy, bumped knee, etc.). Ann was quick to reply, “Well, you still have one good arm, so I think you’ll be all right,” then continued to pick up toys, heading back to Audrey’s room. Audrey was determined to get around this “one good arm” loop hole though! Of course, with Ann out of sight Audrey’s version of “picking up” is really just picking up the toy she wants to play with and then starts playing. Well, the toy she wanted to play with at the moment was the kitchen set’s coffee pot. And she wanted to put it into the microwave. So she proceeded to stand on the step stool to put it in the microwave and somehow lost her balance and fell (just in case social services is monitoring this blog – it was an 8” step stool onto a carpeted living room). Long story short, she was hysterical, Ann took her to ER again and came home with a brand new pink cast. Déjà vu.
Obviously, we can read between the lines here and it seems clear to me she broke both on Memorial Day and just didn’t complain about her right arm on the first trip in…that and we just like to double up on ER payments for the fun of it. In all seriousness, it was pretty hard for Audrey…every night for the first week or two she was waking up in pain and in a tired state, was pretty much inconsolable. Needless to say, Audrey was pretty pumped when she had her casts taken off (video below). Although, to the medically challenged, I was a bit surprised they took the casts off. The before and after x-rays virtually looked identical, and the doctor basically said as much, but insisted that she should heal up just fine, barring any falls in the next month or so. Note to Ann…let’s just skip Audrey picking up toys for a month or so. Let’s just hope that she’ll find less traumatic ways to get out of picking up toys in the future!