Poor JJ broke his leg. It's the saddest thing in the world to see him scooting along the floor in his full leg cast, isn't it. The story is this: While I was enjoying my one day off of full time parenting, JJ's trampoline bliss ended abruptly with an injury (as all children's fun usually does). He and his brothers play at a ward friend's house while I spend the morning teaching dance classes. I just happen to pay her to take them several more hours after that so I can get the house cleaned, projects finished, shopping done and about anything else I can think of that I took completely for granted before my house was over-run by 3 energetic boys.
Back to JJ. Being the unstoppable trooper that he is, apparantly JJ had a mystery accident while jumping on the trampoline then proceeded to wander around the house, eat dinner, etc. for a good hour after the incident occured, until either something snapped or he could ignore the pain no longer and he decided to lay on the floor and writhe clutching his leg close in a secluded room of the house until discovered. When I arrived to pick him up he was experiencing some shock and was overall a different child. A mother's first clue to knowing when something is serious. He was in a lot of pain if we tried to straighten his leg but there was no obvious malformation, protruding bone or swelling. So, we decided not to brave the torture of running to the emergency room (we already had a bad experience before with that) and we all slept on the case of the mystery leg injury.
Actually, we tried to sleep on it but JJ's bladder did not allow much of it. He was up every hour or so needing to go to the bathroom and as you can imagine, he is not walking at this time. He still won't even open his leg up without squeeling with pain. So helping him on and off the potty is our task to do. And folks it wasn't pretty.
To speed up this long winded explanation the next morning we took him in for x-rays and he had a fissure like break straight across his bone (tibia) just below the knee. There was no growth plate damage, and no shifting of the bone, thank goodness, so a cast without surgery was the solution. He should heal up in a month. Children are amazing...an adult would take 4 months to heal from this kind of break. But we do have to closely monitor the growth of the wounded bone over the years to make sure it doesn't outgrow the little bone (fibula) attached to it. That would make some messy complications to deal with. Since the cast was put on he has been much more pleasant but it has been an adventure hauling him around everywhere.
I'm lucky he's such a movie buff. He really would be content sitting on the couch all day in front of a movie. But I don't want his walking skills to regress back so far that he is surpassed by Aaron. And I would like him to, at some point, be able to escort himself to the bathroom before the 4 weeks are up. So we took him off the couch and set him in the middle of the floor so he would discover that he has 3 more limbs to move around with. After complaining for a minute he started scooting himself around a bit and he exclaimed "Look, I'm a snake", "Yes, JJ you can be a snake, or a doggie, or a crab!" we replied. We got him a little skateboard that he can use to roll around the house on his tummy. And we dusted off and we recharged the little electric bumper car we got two Christmas' ago so he can play outside with his friends. We also got a radio flyer wagon to drag him in for park trips that I plan to take the boys on now that the weather is getting lovely again.
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