This has been a crazy week! First, I spent all day Tuesday decorating Rose Parade Floats, I worked on the City of Alhambra float, putting on the red that is surrounded by the yellow on the sides, and cutting flowers, and twisting palm fiber so it can form the bear fur. I don’t actually remember Wednesday, but Thursday ended in a dramatic way. We went to a park and had lots of fun. Fiona loves going down slides head first, she holds up her head and arms like she is Super Girl. Then we went to a book store to find a tide pool book for Fiona. While there, my mother called me but I didn’t talk to her because I was chasing Fiona and trying not to spill really hot tea. That’s when things got interesting.
When I called my mother back, she told me she might have broken her elbow. Say What?!? She fell in the driveway while closing the door of her trunk and landed on her elbow. We rushed to her house, picked her up, and took her to the emergency room. There, a nurse argued with her about her level of pain, but my mother convinced her that she really was in pain and she was allowed in immediately. John took Fiona home and I stayed at the hospital.
After some time, a doctor ordered an iv to be placed so that my mother could receive morphine. After a lot more time the iv was placed and then more time went by before the morphine was administered. Then my mother was wheeled away to have x-rays. The x-rays revealed that the elbow was mostly dislocated, but that she fractured her radial head. After more time and more morphine, the doctor “relocated” her elbow joint (he popped it back in). It was really cool to watch even if it was very painful for my mother. She squeezed my hand and handled it like a champ. More time passed and x-rays were taken again, showing that the bone was slipping out of place because of the fracture. Grass began to grow between our toes before more morphine was administered, the doctor relocated the elbow again (far quicker and less painful this time) and then the arm was splinted instantly. More x-rays revealed that everything was staying where it should and so we were finally released. Total time: 5 1/2 hours.
Sorry the photos are fuzzy, they were taken with my phone.
Because we were not home when I called my mother, I didn’t have a car, so we had to take a taxi home. The hospital staff was very nice and called the cab. The driver took us to my house where I picked up house keys and my car and drove my mother home. She handled everything really well given the circumstances and I am very proud of her. She didn’t cry or freak out and she didn’t swear during the relocation. She even kept up her sense of humor by telling the x-ray technician that she they needed to stop meeting this way. She also joked with the doctor while he was causing her a lot of pain. The staff was very nice and they took good care of my mother. I arrived home finally at about 11:15pm.
Here is a crappy phone photo of her arm in the splint. She had to hold it in that position for about five minutes.
I don’t remember what we did on Friday but I know I was really tired when we did it.
According to my camera, we went to the pier on Thursday before we went to the bookstore:
I don’t know if it’s all the swimming I did while pregnant, but Fiona is truly a water baby. She loves the water, especially the ocean (more on that later). She wanted to jump off the pier into the water, and we didn’t stay long in order to preserve our sanity.
New Year’s Eve we went to dinner with my mother at Cafe Fiore. Fiona was bored and I will not likely take her to dinner again any time soon. We rarely ever do and now I know why. The food was good and Fiona flirted with the bartender who gave her lots of her favorite fruit (blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries), but she did not want to sit in her seat. Once in a while we take her to lunch and she is usually very good, but at dinner she was impatient and went spent a lot of the time walking her around. Lesson learned. We boxed our leftovers and came home, watched a movie after Fiona went to sleep and then went to sleep ourselves. No Times Square Ball Drop here. Sadly, Fiona woke up at 1:30, so it was not a great night’s sleep. She has been really inconsistent with sleep lately, sleeping through the night for a few nights, then waking up for a few nights.
We began 2012 with a visit to our favorite coffee shop, where Fiona has taken quite the liking to carrot muffins.
I have no idea what I was thinking. Probably, “I wonder if I can crawl under the table and sleep for a few minutes. Will anyone notice?” Or “How can I avoid going back to work on Tuesday but still get paid?”
On Sunday we had lunch with my Uncle Richard and Aunt Guila at Marmelade Cafe. I did not take photos :( Fiona enjoyed running around and looking at a koi pond, and also sitting on Guila’s lap playing with her iPhone. The service at the restaurant was horrible. The waitress messed up John’s drink order, then forgot to take his meal order, then forgot to correct her first mistake, then forgot my mother’s drink, then both she and the manager agreed to take my mother’s drink off the bill (because she never got it) but it was still on the bill! I’ve been to this same restaurant before so I know this is not typical, but yeesh! The pleasant company and beautiful weather made it all worth it!
Fiona has been doing great during this vacation. We have been taking daily morning walks in the neighborhood. She is becoming very verbal and expressing herself in her own language. I’m sure at some point it will turn into English, but right now all the little sounds she making are so cute. If we ever wanted to lock her in her room we missed our chance because she knows how to open the door:
She continues to work on using a spoon and fork (even getting some good bites in at dinner tonight) and we continue to do lots of laundry and cleaning up. She understands so much that we tell her, it’s wonderful and scary at the same time. I tell her to take something to Daddy or to go show Daddy something, and she does it, even if he is in another room. She retrieves things for us from other rooms (especially if those things are a bowl that will be filled with fruit). She puts things away if we ask her to, and the other day helped me clean up water on the floor. She took a paper towel I had in my hand and found all the little droplets and wiped them up.
She cooks in her play kitchen:
The other day I asked her to make me something to eat in her play kitchen and she went to it and began stirring in her little pot!
She imitates me a lot, so if I show her how to do something, she’ll do it on her own. She has been eating meat, especially ham, but even beef, which makes us very happy. I love that she prefers fruits and vegetables and I hope she always does, but I also want her to get enough fat and protein so she can grow big and strong. Speaking of growing, all of her 12 month pants are now short, finally at 19 months. She definitely understands the word “no” and uses it liberally. She loves playing with her dolls and reading books. Lately, she favors “Zomo”, “Jabuti”, and “Coyote”.
At home she is a laughing machine, but outside she is still quite shy and reserved. I think she really enjoyed having mommy and daddy home every day and I am so sad to return to work and leave her. Tuesday will be doubly difficult because I also have school that night, so we will go from mommy 24/7 to mommy for a couple of hours all day. Ugh! I am getting anxiety just thinking about it.
Previously I said Fiona was a water baby. When we take her to the beach she makes a bee line for the surf. We took her to the beach several times in the last two weeks and each time she headed for the water immediately. She just loves it. Here she is running to the water:
John was showing me part of a crab he found. Fiona is so fast, no time to look at anything else.
She would run right in if we let her. I can’t wait until she learns to swim! I think she will love it, especially ocean swimming, which is different than pool swimming.
Ah, the beach in January:
Fiona’s shoes inside John’s shoes:
She also has a keen eye for birds and finds them in books and in real life, sometimes spotting them in places that are not obvious. She spots seagulls even when they are hiding, and saw a crane today.
Fiona on a sea horse:
She just loves the sea.
And that is our life in a nutshell. Neither John nor I want to go back to work tomorrow, and we both worry about how Fiona will handle it. Not only will our routine of the last two weeks be disrupted, but we will both be gone during the day and my mom will not be here because of her elbow. Fiona is going to a friend’s house, one that she has never been to alone, and then I have class tomorrow night, so I will not be here for dinner or bedtime, and will only spend a couple of hours with her all day.
I want to weep.
I hope everyone had a nice New Year’s Eve and that 2012 brings lots of wonderful things to your lives!
