No More Boot!

Ella's follow up orthopedist appointment was on Thursday and she'd been acting so comfortable on her leg that I was expecting great news at the doctors office, and we were not disappointed!

She was much more nervous about the X-ray this time than she was at the ER, and looked a little panicky and just wanted to be held. I tried to explain it all to her and told her how easy it was going to be, and once it was over, she told the nurse "EASY!" and was quite proud of herself. Steve was out of town and so Mom came with me, and when we went back in the exam room from the X-ray and she told Mom it was EAS-Y! When the doctor came in, she asked Ella if she could see her leg, and Ella, who was busy playing with toys we had brought, looked at the doctor, tapped her leg and went back to playing...well, she let the doctor "see", right? When she realized the doctor was going to actually need to touch it, and not just look at it, she offered her other foot and took off her shoe and sock on the other foot for her...ha! Eventually the doctor managed to get her hands on the correct leg, and Ella didn't flinch at all, no matter where she pushed. She said the X-ray looked perfect, and that she is completely healed!

So, she is done with the boot - I had her shoe in my purse and she was so excited to see it and get to put it back on, and walked a little funny at first but quickly got back to normal. She still says "ow" and points to her leg, but she sometimes points to the wrong leg, so I think she's just remembering that she had the boot and had an 'ow', because it definitely seems that she is in no pain at all.

We took a short walk with Cory yesterday and then a long one today, it's so nice for her to be able to be mobile again outside. And we'll go back to gymnastics next weekend. I still need to get the courage up to take her to the playground again. Of course she's been there many times before this and nothing has happened, but I still feel a little bit nervous about it.

A few pics from the past few days -












I'm so happy that she is healed and we successfully survived her first broken bone. What a little champ we have!!

Dinosaur Train Party

These are from a few weeks ago but I'm finally getting around to putting them up here! A few Saturdays ago, on Ella's last day of freedom before she hurt her leg, we went to a birthday party for her friend Cooper and Ella had an absolute blast. We told her all week that there was going to be there a train there and she was so excited, plus she was practicing her "happy birthday" (which is really just 'happy') and of course she frequently reminded us there would be cake. Well, the party certainly lived up to her expectations!!

The train was so cool, it drove the kids (and chaperones :)) all around our friends' neighborhood and Ella loved every second of it. It was really cold out but that did not deter her in the slightest and every trip that train made, WE were on it.










The girl that sat next to her is Taylor, and they were BFFs for the day. They played together for hours, and the two of them, plus two other little girls were like a little roving band of giggling girls, they just played and played! The girls taught Ella "ring around the roses", which they all laughed hysterically every time it was time to fall.

Playing a game of 'hatching dinosaur eggs' (Cooper was the birthday boy!)


Cake!!


And of course, since Ella fancies herself the Dog Whisperer, when their big dog Tucker got up in his chair, Ella happily managed to make a little room for herself to best position herself in there with him.



We ended up staying at our friends until 9pm, definitely much later than your typical 3-year old's birthday party but we were all having such a good time. Ella is still saying "ashes" for us to sing the song over and over, and still remembers the train and of course the dog!

Happy Hair Washing

I took these videos a few weeks ago because I wanted to capture how much fun Ella has in the bath now, even when it comes to hair washing - a month or so ago she would NEVER have happily rested in the water while her hair and head were all wet.

The fact that she'll just lay there with her head and hair IN the water, enjoying herself, is still so great to me and I'm not taking it for granted!



And this is just her being her funny and silly self (hiccup, yawns, and all)!

Great Strides!

Ella made amazing strides (pun intended!) with her leg this weekend. On Friday she still wasn't standing on it, and Friday night Steve had the idea to do a movie night. We kept telling Ella how fun it was going to be and after bath we put her on the couch and she grabbed the remote and was ready to go!



Popcorn! (or dap-dap as Ella calls it)



It was so nice - she sat right in between us on the couch and we watched a cartoon movie, it was so fun snuggling and relaxing with her for the night.

On Saturday she stood up on her leg early in the morning, and by Saturday afternoon she was walking on it. She started pretty hesitantly and was walking with a kind of stutter-step where she'd step ahead with her good foot, pull her left foot even with her front foot, and kept leading with her good foot. A few hours later though she was walking fluidly and almost just like normal, except with the boot.

We didn't give her Motrin all day because I didn't want her to do too much on it if she couldn't feel it, and she did great.

Here she is, up to her old tricks!!







This video is so funny - I was wanting to get a clip of Ella walking but Steve started vacuuming upstairs right when I started filming, and this shows her reaction when it comes to the vacuum!



We had some friends come to visit for the weekend and it was fun to catch up with them for a few days. Valentine's Day was Sunday, Ella and I got some treats from our Valentine, and Ella made an adorable craft at church. A few Valentine's pics -







She continues to do great and this morning she walked down the stairs for the first time. She's getting better so quickly which is just awesome to see!

She's Crawling!

Ella is doing so well with her leg. She can't stand yet, but is scooting around a lot and tonight was crawling all over the place laughing hysterically. She does not complain about it AT ALL. She will occasionally do something that hurts it, and then she makes this heartbreaking little face where her lip quivers and she fights back tears and puts out her arms to be picked up. But other than that, she is just her happy cheery self and continues to amaze us with her attitude.

She had a very bad night of sleep on Monday night, and was awake from 3:30 am - 4:15 am - I think she must have woken up, forgot it was hurt and stood up on it, because she really cried and we woke up to her screaming :(. Poor little thing. Last night she slept right through, which we were so glad about it. We're still giving her Motrin during the day and before bed, but it really seems that when she's sitting she's really comfortable and doesn't even notice it.

Here's the sweet girl on her favorite perch, the kitchen counter

First Broken Bone

So, this is definitely one "first" that I wish I was not writing about. Our sweet little angel has a fractured tibia :(.

I took her to the playground yesterday afternoon and we were on the steps climbing up to the big slide, which we'd done several times in a row already, and Ella fell backwards off a step, just several inches high, and on to the metal platform below. It was a small distance, but she twisted and fell pretty hard, and really hit the step below. The way she was crying I knew she was really hurt - she screamed and screamed. And in a way-to-make-me-feel-even-worse, she wailed "I - WANT - DADDY"...I did get her to settle down after about 5 minutes and asked her if she wanted to keep playing or go home. She said 'home', which was my first sign that something was really wrong. She seemed really down in the car ride home, and when I brought her in the house she would not put any weight at all on her leg and just wanted to be held. She sat with me on the couch for a while which she never does, I was thinking she was really shaken up and scared still. I fed her dinner and gave her a bath, and every time she was sitting in one place she was so happy and content, but still just refused to put any weight on it. My final diagnosis occurred in the playroom because she always has a million things to do in there and I was sure she'd start moving around. But she didn't, she just stayed in one place and scooted around a little, but still wouldn't stand. At that point I called our pediatrician after-hours service and the nurse said we should bring her to the ER.

There are several hospitals in the area, one of them is only about 15 minutes away, but there is a Children's ER at one about 45 minutes away, and that is the one she told us to go to. We got there around 9pm and were there until after midnight. I could write a twenty-page essay on the ER experience, which I will spare you, but the final result was that the first reading of the Xray showed a fracture, but they could not conclusively decide, and told us to go home and if she was still unable to bear weight after a night of sleep, to get her in to see an orthopedist today. Ella was such an amazing sport the entire night - she was up from 3:00 pm until 12:30 pm and didn't have a meltdown once - she was sweet and snuggly and just wanted to be held the whole time.

This morning she woke up and was the same, so I made an appointment for this afternoon with an orthopedist that was referred by our pediatrician. After making the appointment, a nurse from the ER called and said that there had been a mistake when they read her Xray and we should not have been discharged without having set her leg, and that we needed to come back in to the ER today to be seen again - like I was going to repeat that experience on a weekday when there are doctor's offices open!! I said thank you but we'd already made our own arrangements and would be taking care of it ourselves. Hmph.

I finally felt that things were well handled this afternoon, and the orthopedist office was great. The doctor was wonderful and was able to point out the fracture on the Xray so that we were even able to see it. It is a buckle fracture, on the tibia which is the larger of the bones in the lower leg, right above her ankle. She explained that the way she must have landed on it very hard caused the bone to actually buckle into a little horseshoe shape. Ella was so brave during the appointment and when the doctor pressed on the spot where the fracture was she just buried her head in my chest and whimpered but didn't even cry. She is a little champ.

The doctor said she was going to need a plaster cast (I chose purple which I thought Ella would like) but then came back in with this lady who fits children for walking casts and said that they did have one small enough for Ella. That was a small miracle and we were so happy with the change in plans. It is like a boot cast that we can take off to give her a bath, and will be much more comfortable for her than a plaster cast. She will need to wear it for 3 weeks and then we'll take her back for another Xray and assuming it's healed, she'll be able to stop wearing it. The doctor said that little kids' bones are so much more resilient than adults and that the same injury on an adult would take 8-12 weeks to heal (but I guess this also explains why theirs break easier as well).

We got home around 5pm, almost exactly 24 hours after she fell - 24 hours I am very glad are past us. Ella is such a trooper and has once again made me feel incredibly proud to be her mom. It is so hard not be thinking that I somehow failed her, and the 'what-if' I could have done differently and maybe she wouldn't have fallen. But I know that's not productive and we just need to make the best of it now that it's happened and focus on taking good care of her. She won't be able to go to Little Gym for the next 4 weeks and is really going to be limited in her activity - she's watched more TV in the past day then she has in the last 6 months, and I'm thinking at least the next week or so will be the same. She loves books so we've read a lot and she does play in one place and hopefully she'll be feeling better each day and will want to play more and more. It's hard to think of things to do in just one place because she's alwasy so busy and plays outside a lot, but we'll do our best to come up with things to keep her busy and happy.

I am sure I'll be writing more about this the next few weeks so I'll wrap up here for now because this is already very long, definitely not the abridged version! Here are a few pictures of my sweet little angel in her "Wee Walker".


Her boot


Taking Motrin, which she really likes the taste of!


How is she still so darn cute, even after the day she has had??


Cheerful on the couch before bedtime


My poor little girl!!!

Ella Happy

One of Ella's favorite new things to say is "Ella happy" (pronounced Happ-py) when she likes something. The first time she said it, I was asking her what she wanted for breakfast and went through about 5 suggestions, all of which got a resounding NO, and then I said "bagel?" and she said "oohhhh Ella happy"...so, bagel it was :).

As soon she surprised me with that sweet little answer, I quickly got the camera and managed to catch some more of what makes our little girl happy!

Steve's Birthday and Snow!

Steve's birthday was this past Saturday, January 30. Since it fell on a weekend, we had big plans for a night out and Dad and Donna were going to come up for the night to watch Ella for us. Well....the best laid plans, right?

It started snowing on Friday night and by the time we went to bed there was about an inch or so on the ground and when we woke up on Saturday morning there were about 4 inches. It was sleeting by then and sleeted most of the day so the roads were really bad. This is a big deal around here!

Ella couldn't wait to get outside and check out the snow first thing Saturday morning























And here are some videos that Steve put together of Ella's adventures in the snow!






Ella and I baked a cake for Steve's birthday, here is my assistant baker hard at work






Enjoying cake and presents after dinner










Even though it was not how we expected to spend Steve's birthday, we had a really nice day and spent lots of time with just the 3 of us. Church was canceled on Sunday and we didn't leave the house once the whole weekend, we were snowed in!!

Fridge Phonics

We got Ella the Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set for Christmas and I had grand plans of her learning her letters from it.

The idea is that there is one letter on each magnet and when she places the letter in the slot on the container, it says the letter and the sound it makes. She loves magnets and she loves music so it seemed like a no brainer.

But, there is also a button that just directly plays the ABC song without needing to choose any letter - and that seems to be where Ella spends all of her self-appointed alphabet lesson time :).

Although I pictured this being an educational activity, as you can see from this video, Ella has other ideas when it comes to learning from her Fridge Phonics!



And here is her own special rendition of the ABCs



So, not exactly what I intended but just so very cute!!