Hey-ey-ey

♫I said hey! What's goin' on?♬

I'll tell ya what's goin' on.  Lots of stuff!

We're starting school next week, and I'm feeling kind of lost trying to get things ready.  There are all these TJEd keys and things floating around in my head.  "We need to do this and this!  But inspire, not require!  We need to purge because we have too much stuff!  (Yes, that's one of the "ingredients" for TJEd.)  I need to figure out devotional and make it work every day!"  The good thing is that even though I've kind of stressed (not that much, though) about getting a schedule going (I'm working on overcoming my extreme aversion to following a schedule.  Schedules actually kind of freak me out.), I've actually been following something of a schedule while doing Personal Progress.  I've gotten back into reading my scriptures every day (Yes, I fell off that wagon for a while, but I'm back on!), and that gives me courage that I can actually follow some sort of schedule for school.  Positive thoughts!  Baby steps!  And I'm reminding myself that it's ok if things don't go according to the plan.  And, in fact, sometimes it works out for our good when things don't.  BREATHE!

Hyrum started Seminary last Monday.  He's going to the early morning class, and that means that we are dying from lack of sleep.  But it's been such a blessing to him.  I'm so thankful he can go.  The Globe Seminary is actually a converted house on a corner across from the high school.  It's small, but they don't need anything huge.  And one thing I really like is that Hyrum's friend Corrinn decided to go to Seminary too.  We offered to give her a ride or whatever.  We just really wanted to make sure she could do it!  Release Time is available, but she wasn't even thinking of Seminary when she planned her schedule, and then she wasn't pleased about coming at 6:00, but she's coming!  Hooray! Hopefully she'll keep coming!

Here's him on his first day of Seminary.

 

I'm sure some of you heard that Brom broke his arm.  That has been quite an experience.  Here's how it happened.  Brom resists napping just like Jill did.  They liked to wake up as soon as I put them down, but with both Brom and Jill I found that if I nurse them to sleep on my bed they'd stay asleep for a while.  I'd just put pillows all around and hope they'd stay put.  On Monday, August 4, Brom was napping on my bed.  The door was locked because Timmy likes to run in and jump on the bed and get stuff from Jeremy's dresser.  We heard him wake up, and during that time it took to find the unlocker and unlock the door we heard a thump - he'd fallen off the bed.  He cried, and I held him and nursed him.  He did seem fussy for the next couple of days, but I figured he was just teething.  The little guy has 7 teeth and has been popping out more all the time!  Well, on Wednesday morning he was sitting on the floor by me fussing.  I reached down and grabbed his right arm to help him stand, and he just howled!  I couldn't figure out why he was crying.  Hyrum said, "Maybe his arm is hurt."  So I picked him up and looked at his arm, and, by golly, it wasn't just chubby, it was swollen!  I hadn't noticed because his arms are naturally chubby, but the right one was definitely bigger.  And then as I watched him while frantically texting Jeremy and trying to reach our doctor, I noticed he was definitely favoring it.  Poor fella!

 

Well, the first Wednesday of every month is staff training at our doctor, so they couldn't be reached.  I could have taken him to the ER here, but man!  Every time we've been there we've sat in the waiting room for at least 2 hours before being seen.  I decided, like a lot of people here do, to take him down to the Urgent Care in Gold Canyon.  Michael went with us.  I was glad to have him!  We hurried down there and filled out papers and then waited for like a half hour, and then the doctor came and looked at him.  She felt it and didn't think it was broken, but she had him go get an x-ray.  I held him on my lap, and I held his arm in place for the two pictures they took.  The poor fella cried when we had to turn his hand with the thumb up for the first picture.  Here are those pictures.  You can see my hand holding his.  Kind of creepy!

 

 

 

You'll have to click on the picture and zoom in to see the break on the right.  It's slanted down to the right and very faint.  These pictures aren't as clear as the ones Jill got when she broke her arm.  The one on the left was easy to see, but the one on the right is a hairline fracture.  Thank heavens the bones are still aligned!  Anyway, the x-ray tech said she didn't think it was broken.  I didn't see the pictures until later when the doctor came back in.  So I texted Jeremy and told him that the tech didn't think it was broken.  But as soon as I finished the tech came and found us in our room and handed me a disc with the pictures and said, "Actually, I think it really is broken."  The doctor came in with her computer and confirmed that, and she zoomed in so I could see the smaller break.  Then she said they'd have to splint it and send us to a hospital to get it casted.  Darn!  So some guy came in and splinted it.  He used a small pad with fiberglass and wrapped it all in an ace bandage.

 

We got lunch on our way to the hospital because we were all starving!  We showed up at Cardon Children's Medical Center and didn't know where to go.  I figured we'd go in the general entrance because we'd already dealt with a kind of ER already.  So we went in and talked to the lady and she said she'd try to figure out where we were supposed to go.  While we waited we discovered a great big checker/chess board.  It had checkers all over it that were bigger around than a dinner plate.  Michael put those away and pulled out the chess pieces.  They were about knee high on him.  And then he played a quick game of chess against himself.  I was so proud that he knew where all the pieces went and how they all move. :)

 



 

We found out that we went to the wrong entrance after all, so we had to go back outside and around to the ER.  I kept thinking all through that hospital experience what a sad place that must be!  We saw a kid who'd obviously been through chemo, signing out in the lobby.  I thought of how many others must be coming and going all the time.  We saw a couple of girls that looked like they were in horrible pain, just trying to get through the registration process to be seen in the ER.  Michael saw vending machines on our way in, and he kept trying to get a quarter out from under it so he could buy something.  He had some coins in his pocket, but he figured that quarter would be just enough.  (He did get the quarter out eventually, but it wasn't enough for anything after all.  He was so disappointed.)  They called us back, so I went and found Michael and told him to come.  He came, but then he went back out the door to the vending machines while they weighed Brom.  And then we were ready to go to a room, but Michael was nowhere to be seen.  Yep, he went back to those silly machines!  Gave me a good freak-out.

 

The doctor came in and looked at it and said that it should take 4 weeks to heal since he's a baby.  I guess since they're growing so much anyway their bones heal faster.  He said they couldn't put a cast on right then, but they'd put a proper splint on, and then we'd have to come back to the valley to a pediatric bone doctor to get a cast in a week.  Apparently, the splint that guy at Urgent Care put on was too tight, so his fingers were swelling.  I liked the lady who came and put the splint on.  It also has fiberglass in it.  It looked like a long thick bandage, but she got it wet, and then rolled it in a towel to squeeze out the extra water, and then she pulled and stretched it and then wrapped it around the front and back of Brom's arm, bending it around his elbow.  She talked to Michael about how energy cannot be created.  It can only be transferred, so that's why it got hot when it got wet, but as it cooled it hardened.  Pretty cool.  She first wrapped his arm in some thin stuff that was like a sleeve, and then put the splint on, and then wrapped it in something that was like an ace bandage but a lot thinner, and she taped it on.  She brought him a sling too, saying the splint is too heavy for his little shoulder, so he should keep wearing the sling.  And he needs to keep it dry, just like a cast.

 

The hospital has a policy that if a baby comes in with broken bones and is under 2, the parents have to talk with a social worker before discharge.  So we talked with a social worker.  I was kind of worried.  A baby with a broken arm, and I homeschool too!  That ought to set off red flags, right?  I hear all sorts of horror stories about people who lose all their kids because of that exact set of circumstances.  But the social worker was really nice, and she said she homeschooled too.  That helped me feel better!

 

So then as we were being discharged a lady came in to make sure all the information they had was correct.  She had us down for AHCCCS.  Well, last month I got a letter saying we needed to do our twice-a-year application to recertify for AHCCCS, but I knew we wouldn't qualify with Jeremy's new job, so I rejoiced and didn't fill out an application.  But then I wished we had it as I took Brom down to the doctor and then the hospital!  I told the lady at the hospital that the information was correct except that we aren't on AHCCCS anymore, that my husband just got a job that has insurance.  She said, "Oh, well, I checked and it says you're still active for AHCCCS."  Holy cow!  That made me feel a whole lot better!  Our bank account was already low, and here we were having all these deductible payments to pay.  But it turned out we didn't need to after all!  I felt so thankful!  So on our way home we stopped at Urgent Care and fixed it so that AHCCCS will pay for that too.  I have to say, I'm so thankful to be going off AHCCCS and food stamps.  It is such a blessing!  But right now when we were basically in the red and having to pay bills anyway, I'm so thankful that they were there after all! 

 

One problem we've had with Brom's arm so far is that I have to take off the sling to nurse him, and then people run off with it and it gets lost.  And he doesn't like it.  It rubs his neck.  The other problem we've had is that he didn't like the splint.  That first couple of days he kept yanking his splint off.  There was one time he yanked it off before I could finish taping it!  Jeremy had just come home for lunch, and he took Brom and put the splint back on, but he didn't use the sleeve thing, which was getting pretty worn out, and he wrapped it in the ace bandage from Urgent Care instead of the one from the ER.  That has worked much better!  The splint still comes off, but it's a whole lot easier to put back on!  And the guy has gotten used to it.  I have to laugh a bit, though, because the way the people in the ER talked, they expected that splint to never come off until he got a cast.  I admit to being a little to lax at times with putting the splint back on.  I let it air out sometimes.  I need to stop doing that because one time he bumped his arm and it hurt.  But that was only once.  And most of the time I put it on fairly quickly.  But I think it's funny that they thought it'd be more or less permanent.  It's not.  It comes off all the time.  Maybe they don't have babies in splints at home, huh?

 

And, don't worry, Mama.  We have an appointment to get a cast on it tomorrow.  We tried to get our doctor to do it, and he said he could, but then he realized how little Brom is and said he couldn't do it.  So they referred us to a doctor in the valley.  I'm actually kind of relieved it's going to get done and that a specialist will do it.  He does it all the time and should know how to do it really good.  And now that the swelling has gone down they should be able to make it so it'll stay on.  Phew!

 

Here's a picture of Brom.  I took it while we were waiting in the billing office at Urgent Care when we went to switch our insurance.

 

 

I posted this on Facebook and commented how it looked so cute, but so sad!  Jeff commented on it and said it's not cute and that it's messed up that I should think so and that it's wrong that this could happen.  Thanks a lot, Jeff.  We actually catch a lot of negativity from Jeff in the last year or two.  It's frustrating!  I wasn't trying to say that I don't feel sad that it happened or that I don't wish I could go back and leave the door unlocked or the boy on the floor instead of the bed.  (I've been nursing him to sleep on a blanket nest on the floor now.)  I wasn't trying to say I don't feel like kind of a bad mom either.  I just didn't think I needed to spell that out.  I guess Jeff decided he needed to.  Ugh!  I deleted his comments, deciding that I don't need that negativity in my life.  But that doesn't change that he said it or that it hurts.

 



In other news, on Saturday I realized that Timmy is ready to learn to go potty on a tree, so Jeremy decided we should just go up the mountain.  We didn't really have anything pressing, so we went.  It was lovely!  It had rained, so there was actually green stuff on the ground!  It was a nice trip!  It was cooler, and it was good to let the kids an the dog run free.  Timmy took that liberty up a notch when we told him to try "twinkling" on a tree.  He took off all his clothes and his shoes and left them somewhere in the forest so he could try.  Thank heavens Hyrum found them!  Here are some of the pictures from that trip.

 

 

And on Sunday it was our turn for dinner.  I made tater tot casserole, and it came out so good!  And then it rained really hard, and we all went out and ran around in the rain.  It was fun. :)

 

Oh, and here's a picture Timmy drew of blue SpongeBob with two red Patricks.