When we got there the crowd was pleasantly thin. I breathed a sigh of relief, not because it was empty but because we had survived the transition of home to museum in one piece and we made it without too many melt downs, band-aides, bathroom trips, changes of clothes, last minute diaper changes, spills and G-d only knows what else.
We are fortunate to have a beautiful Children's Museum relatively close by with lots of things for the kids to do. We walked in and hung up our coats. The children were so excited! Immediately the older children began to shepherd the younger ones to different parts of the museum and excitedly showed them all of activities that they could do. It was really cute to see. Sruly had an absolute blast. He looked like any other typical child, completely enjoying himself running around, exploring and letting the other kids show him "the ropes" with a big smile on his face. He thoroughly enjoyed touching, feeling, running, jumping and simply being a part of it all.
An hour later we found ourselves in the jumping room. This was a cavernous room with an equally large tunnel shaped moon bounce. The kids had a blast (I'm not sure who had the biggest smile - the kids or me watching them)! This was probably Sruly's favorite activity. After about 20 min on the moon bounce, one of my boys, who is known to be a real tough guy, came limping over to me crying. Just for the record, this is a child who never ever cries unless something is very wrong. Judging from his reaction and the look on his face, I knew immediately that our next stop was most probably going to be what we are beginning to think of as our second home - the emergency department of Children's Hospital. It just so happened that as he was exiting the tunnel, his foot somehow managed to find and wedge itself in the only exposed space in the entire moonbounce, a gap five and a half inches wide between the main structure and the landing mat. As his body continued forward his leg stayed put and twisted. I found myself on the phone with my husband who was five exhibits over begging him to drop - I mean grab everything and high tail it to the moonbounce room. As my husband sat there examining my son's foot and making the determination that it would be a while until the two of them would see the cozy interior of home that evening, the staff of the museum came over with an incident report form for us to fill out and a wheel chair to bring our now immobile child to the van.
Before leaving the lobby I made a quick head count to make sure we were all together.... Well to make a short story a bit shorter, I kept coming up with one child more then I thought we should have. This wasn't so bad, only that I honestly thought we had one child less then that in our family. When do I need to start worrying that I am loosing it? After counting the children for the fifth time I began to think, well, maybe I really do have that many kids! When did that happen?? ...But I could have sworn we had one less than I had counted.... So I counted again, and again I came up with one extra child! I was dumbfounded. How on earth?!?! Seriously, I could have sworn we were not up to that number just yet.
While I was re-counting and trying to de-clultter my infamous mommy brain, my husband was talking with the nervous staff about what had happened. I counted one more time and my eyes landed on the sleeping child in the stroller who was covered with coats. I checked to make sure he or she was still breathing under the mountain of goose feathers and it was then that I discovered that it was nothing more than a pile of coats. At this point my patience were beginning to run thin. I had counted the children a dozen times by then and had asked them to put on their coats at least half of that, but the only thing that they seemed interested in was how fast the wheel chair could take a corner without tipping and spilling its' occupant flat out on the floor.
Miracle of miracles, we made it to the car without any additional tears (or broken bones for that matter). On the way home my husband called the ER to find out which attendings were on for that shift. (Not that it would make a difference either way, being that my husband pretty much knows ALL of them on a first name basis, thanks to our "ever so passively calm and quiet" dear children).
After settling the rest of the family at home, my husband and our now immobile former Mexican jumping bean headed to what I am absolutely now convinced to be our home away from home - aka Children's Hospital.
After the standard routine examinations and x-rays he was given the diagnosis (of which my husband had already bet our life savings on what it would be well before we had even left the museum) of a fractured tibia (thank G-d for little things), which would need to be set and casted. Under normal circumstances this would render him pretty much immobile for the next eight weeks. However, once he figured out that he could drop his wheel chair and crutches and still ride his scooter, skate board, bicycle and play hockey without too much pain, he considered himself a free man. Six weeks, three shredded casts and a rather relieved chief of orthopedic surgery later, he was given the "all clear" to resume his "normal" daily activities.
"What??!" I said, when the two of them came home. "They sent you home without a rocker boot?? Do they know how active this child is???! He is going to break it again before tomorrow morning! He hasn't used those muscles in 8 weeks and they think that this is a typical child who will just ease those muscles back into use slowly and gently! Well they will be seeing him again!"
Sure enough, 4 hours after my husband and son returned from the hospital, they were on their way back once again with a freshly re-injured leg. This time, however, they had the sense to send him home with a rocker boot. After another six weeks and a rocker boot that was shredded and worn down to the metal base plate we had a healed and happy young man who was ready to do it all over again....
- Matana B
Before our son realized that he could get around just fine without his wheel chair and crutches.
