Casting Call!

"Going from crawling to running! What a bright girl we have", thought the proud mama and puffy chested papa!

Absolutely wrong! Somewhere between last Friday night and this Tuesday at daycare, Devi managed to crack her wrist bone; the big one, the radius. With no permanent damage, except to our parenting egos, Devi now is wearing a cast on her left arm for the next three weeks.

THE DIAGNOSIS:

The splinted arm - otherwise known as "The Club"

We don't know exactly how or when it happened. The doctor said it is consistent with a straight-armed fall which she sees all the time in toddlers, especially those who are pretty aggressive walkers and who are petite in frame. Devi went from crawling to running and stumbles frequently. The doctor figures that the injury happened over a series of falls, first starting as a small crack and then getting bigger over time.

We don't know when it happened because Devi has a very high pain tolerance and never showed signs that she was hurt, which the doctor says is pretty typical of children who have lived in orphanages. She also said that children this age have soft bones and because we are not sure about her nutrition before we got her, this could also be a contributing factor.
We finally discovered the problem, when we noticed that when she would try and stand up she only would put one hand down on the ground to push up with and hold the other one up.

The doctors first examination didn't turn up anything. Devi still claps her hands, feeds herself, and acts totally normal even when you push on the wrist. It is only when baring weight on a bent wrist that she will pull her arm back. The x-ray revealed the crack.
Patrick and I feel awful, terrible, we have basically beat ourselves up. I guess that means we finally are really parents.

THE CASTING:
After two days in a splint, today we went in for the cast. The only appointment available was smack dab in the middle of her napping schedule. So by the time we saw the doctor, Devi was rather punchy and stealing the hearts of everyone in the office with her silliness. Waving hellos and goodbyes to everyone, blowing kisses...you name it, it was part of her act.

The ortho doc said this is the most common of little kid injuries. He applauded us for catching it, because it is not a necessarily painful injury so he figures about 50% of the them go undetected by the parents. It is good to cast the arm to protect it from further injury, especially with toddlers who are continually stumbling, but he claims that it would have probably healed on it's own. They cast the whole arm, instead of just the wrist because he said that invariably the family would arrive home after casting, only to find the child in the car seat and the cast, intact, lying somewhere else in the car :) I assured him that would surely be us...we had this happen overnight with the splint all ready!!

Two nurses, cooing over our sweet baby girl, applied the casting material, None the worse for wear, Devi's tiny left arm, now encased in fiberglass, was nearly completed in about 10 minutes. I say nearly, as Devi quickly made a nice indention of her "bite" in it before it had an opportunity to harden! That's my girl :)
Interestingly enough, one of the nurses helping us also is an adoptive mother of a now 13 year old girl, Asha, from Madras, India. She brought her home when she was only two. Sherri, the proud mama, showed us Asha's picture and we swapped adoption stories. The memories seemed to still be clearly with her some 10 years later :)

Noticing the clock on the wall as we left, we were nearly two hours past our afternoon nap (boy, could I use one!) It was no surprise that Devi was fast asleep before the car ignition took hold, limp neck slumped into the soft stuffed belly of her riding companion, "Bunny", thumb in mouth. Playing on the care stereo was "5 Little Monkey's Jumping On the Bed" . I had to chuckle, with Devi's first and hopefully last broken bone mending, maybe we should pick safer music to play for our precocious toddler :)

OTHER RECENT EVENTS:

Oh! How I've grown. I'm finally wearing some size 9 month clothing! This is a current view of my front side on the top. And my backside on the bottom! My feet continue to grow too.
I now wear a size 4 shoe when I decide to keep them on.

I love to read the paper with
daddy after Saturday morning waffles!

Bubbles are a new favorite thing. The perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon!
AH! The wonder of bubbles!

Today's activity was making paper hats out of daddy's morning News Tribune. Devi did all the folding. Once completed we had a parade around the kitchen island. I played the spoon and bowl...the spoon sometimes becoming a conductors baton. Devi played the tambourine and sometimes helped me by playing her metal splint on the bowl...all in time to marching music! It was great fun :)

Greyhounds are known to "Roo"...tipping their heads back, forming an "O" with there mouth and howling. We have taught Cayenne to do this on command. This is Devi attempting to get Cayenne to howl, all by herself. It is darling, so of course we encourage it and we end up the ones doing all the howling. It makes us laugh every time.

Best Buddies!