Fun times at the ER with Superman and his collarbone

For a change I'm going to post something other than random conversations with my preschooler....

Although, come to think of it, we did have a very cute exchange yesterday on the way home from her school as we stopped at a red light.
B: Mommy, why that car don't have a top? (pointing to a white Mustang convertable)
M: That's called a convertible. You can take the top off when it's nice outside and then put the otp on when it's cold.
B: Can you take the top off our car now?
I wish!

But I digress....

This post is about the glories of a 2 athlete family. Michael and I met when we raced for the same mountain bike team and we share a love of cycling and pretty much anything that will get us outdoors and moving.

Consequently, as our family has grown we have had to learn to juggle training schedules. While there was something of a learning curve to figuring out how to squeeze two people running or riding or swimming or weigh lifting into the limited weekly spare time that comes with children, work and life, we have finally come to a point where we are both able to get sufficient time at our activity of choice, though no longer together as we once did. What this translates to is a lot of trading off days/nights of exercise.

Last night was Michael's night to ride. He headed off for a 6:00 group ride that goes out to Stone Mountain Park. I knew that after the group finished, he would likely stay on at the park with a handful of others to get in a few more laps for extra miles and would be home sometime between 8:30-9.

At 7:40 Brenna was playing happily in the shower when my phone rang. It's Michael's ringtone. Hearing your spouse's ringtone when you know they are supposed to be out putting the hurt on all the other riders in town is never a good thing, but my first thought was that he had flatted and needed a ride home. I answer the phone with a cheerful "Hey!" and am already planning how I'm going to get B into her jammies and then into the car to make the drive over to the park.

I was completely unprepared for the rest of the conversation. In response to my 'Hey' an unfamiliar male voice said "Uh, hi. Is this Rebecca?"
Me: Yes? [confusion and worry...]
Voice: Hi. I'm a friend of Michael's and we're at Stone Mountain Park.
Me: Uh huh.... [worry is setting in]
Voice: He fell off his bike..... But he's ok.
Me: [panic. can't breathe...but wait, if he's ok why is this person calling me??] Uh huh....
Brenna: Mommy! I'm ready to get out (of the shower).
Voice: They are going to take him to the hospital...
Brenna: Mommy!!! I want to get out
Me: Brenna sweetie, you need to wait a minute.
Me: [breathe! must remember to breathe!...hospital. not good. bad. hospital. bad.] "Wha...Is he ok?....Wa...I....uh...."
Brenna: I want to get out!! Mommy!
Me: Brenna, you're going to have to wait!
Voice: Here, he wants to talk to you....
[lots of background noise. Voices. noise]

Then Michael gets on the phone. He sounds terrible. Marginally coherent but conscious. However, this is not reassuring. I try to ask what happened but all I get is "Got too close to the edge." Huh? WTF is that supposed to mean?! Edge of what? The world?

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Middle_East/Saudi_Arabia/East/Ar_Riyad/Riyadh/photo482233.htm

He says they are taking him to Grady (Hospital). And then he hangs up. 

Of all the calls you can get as the spouse of an athlete, the one you don't want to get at 8:00 pm (or any time for that matter) is the one saying an ambulance is taking your barely coherent significant other to the city's primary Trauma 1 hospital. Not cool. Grady is where you want to go if you've been shot...or are dying.

But first things first. I need to find someone to take Brenna. I call the parents of her best friend Emma. They are wonderful and despite the fact that Emma's dad, John, is single parenting while Emma's mom, Catherine, is in Florida taking care of her dad who is in the hospital, they agree to take Brenna for the evening. I tell Brenna that she is going to get to have a sleep-over with Emma.

B: Right now?!
M: Yes! Right now! Won't that be fun?!
B: Yes!!! Maybe the Snack Fairy will come to Emma's house and bring her some snack too!
(I doubt that since I'm the snack fairy and I'm pretty sure I won't be sneaking into Emma's house after I'm done at the ER to deliver dry cereal and water in a fancy gift bag, but who am I to ruin her excitement?)
M: Maybe! Do you want to take your Hello Kitty pillow?
B; I need to take a lot of toys. (as she starts to grab everything within reach)
M: No, Emma has lots of toys. Let's take your pillow. And do you want to take Mimi and Boo (stuffed monkey and bear)?
B: No. I don't need them.
(I pack them anyway.)

By 8:05 I have Brenna in her jammies and in the car. Of course, it didn't occur to me to think ahead and pack clothes for her to go to school in but we did have 3 stuffed animals and her pillow.

On our way over to Emma's house (5 min drive), my phone rings again. It's Michael. He now slurs at me that they are taking him to Atlanta Medical Center...which I've never heard of but am somewhat relieved that they seem to think that a hospital that does not provide Level 1 trauma service is acceptable.

By 8:15 Brenna is happily playing with Emma. Emma's dad only looks slightly panicked at the thought of getting two 3-yr olds to bed, and I have mapped out the hospital and discovered that it is all of 2 miles from the house. Who knew?!

By 8:30 I am at the hospital. Michael is not. His ambulance is still somewhere en route. I settle in to wait. 20 minutes later Michael calls again and says he's in room 13. I get my "visitor badge" (aka, an envelope sticky label with my name handwritten on it...This is a high class institution!), and head back to room 13 where I find this...

He has broken his collarbone.

yep. that's broken

An injury that is all too common in cycling but that does not make it any less painful.

And I finally get the whole story...or at least what he remembers of it.

Some crashes are the product of a confluence of events that fit together to make a really cool story: Like, I was riding along and suddenly there was this enormous wild animal that ran out into the road and tried to tear my leg off but I was able to fight it off by my quick thinking, great bike handling skills, and squirting a 7-month old chocolate peppermint gel into its eye whereby it fled the scene but kicked a giant boulder into the road which I was almost able to avoid except for the young mother pushing her quadruplets across the road in one of those 4 seat long strollers whom I had to avoid and I ended up crashing spectacularly and breaking my collarbone.

Yeah, this isn't one of those stories.

He did, indeed decide to stay after the group finished their laps to ride additional laps with a couple other guys. They were on the inner loop and had just past the road with the big hill that connects the outer loop to the inner one (for those of you who are familiar with the park). Michael decided to do a hard effort and got into his aerobars and took off.

He had a gap on the other guys, but has been battling the tail end of a chest cold and started to cough. While coughing he took his eyes off the road and dipped his head a bit. This small motion caused him to veer off the straight line and when he looked up he was flying directly toward the curb of the road.

He slammed into the curb at 25+ mph and supermanned over the front end of his bike...

flew through the air, and crash landed into a wooded embankment whereby he tumbled ass over teakettle for another 20 yards over rocks and sticks and through brambles and underbrush until finally coming to a rest in a rocky creek. The tumbling probably only took seconds but he says that time slowed down and he felt like he would never stop rolling.


During the tumble his helmet strap broke and his helmet flew off his head. Luckily prior to coming off his helmet seems to have done it's job (at least it appears that way based on the scrapes, dents and giant crack evident in it now) and protected his head from the worst of the impact. Though, I hazard to say he is suffering from a mild concussion now.

He says his first thought once he realized he was still alive was that he needed to get out of the wet creek and back on his bike. Then he moved and pain shot through his shoulder. He reached up to the spot where the pain was the worst and immediately knew his collarbone was broken.

The rest of events are fuzzy for him. He remembers the guys he was riding with came to help him and collected his bike and helmet. His helmet landed some 20 feet away from him. He remembers the guys helping him out of the creek and the ambulance. He remembers being carried on a backboard back up the embankment and to the ambulance. I'm not entirely sure he remembers speaking to me to tell me he was going to Grady.

We spent 5 hrs in the ER and finally left around 1:00 am.

We then headed out to find a 24 hr pharmacy to get the prescribed painkillers. As an aside, we went to the 24 hr pharmacy over near Emory University where, apparently, packs of university girls feel they need to buy make-up at 2:00 am. Another thing to file in the annals of "Who knew?"

Then it was back home for some adventures in showering with a broken collarbone. He finally got in bed around 3:30 am and the painkillers did their trick and knocked Michael out for a couple hours.

So, for the next 6 weeks or so, Michael will be playing the role of invalid and I will be Florence Nightingale...Or Nurse Ratched, depending on your point of view.






Fun times.

http://ralphdeeds.hubpages.com/hub/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoos_Nest_Watching_the_World_Series_Scene_with_Jack_Nicholson___viceo

Likes, dislikes, and things you learn at school

More conversations with my preschooler...

Walking home from school we pass a restaurant.
B: What that?
M: That's a restaurant.
B: No. What IS it?
M: It's a restaurant. Like the restaurants we go to.
B (getting really irritated with me now): No! What it called?
M (oh!): It's called Cafe 360.
B: I don't like cafes.
M (this is news to me): You don't like cafes?
B: No
M (to my knowledge she's never been to a cafe): How do you know? Have you ever been to one?
B: No.
M: Then how do you know you don't like them? I like cafes.
B: But I don't like cafes. I like chicken nuggets!

Right.
-------

Ha-beh-nation in captivity

Upon picking Brenna up at school she is very excited to show me the picture of a polar bear that she made. Under the assumption that her class learned something about the North Pole, or snow, or animals that like winter and cold I asked,
M: Where do polar bears live?
B: In a cage! Silly mommy!
(Silly Mommy indeed. Here I was thinking that they might learn about animals in their natural habitat.)
M: In a cage?
B: Yes! A cage.
No, wait. Maybe she said "cave" not "cage". I decide to explore this option.
M: What does the cage look like?
B: Like a big tunnel. I'm talking about ha beh nation!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8280986/Polar-bear-pictures.html?image=1

Of course she is.

----
Important information Brenna has shared with me in the potty
B: Toothpicks are not for your tushie! (True that)
---
B: Don't turn on the lights
M: You want to go potty in the dark?
B: Yes, because I don't want to hear anything.
-----

And finally, 14 reasons Brenna can't go to bed - from the mundane to the fanstastic:
I'm not tired.
My room is scaring me.
I'm still hungry
I need a flashligh
My nose/lip/leg/arm/hand hurts/other body part

I need a boo-boo (for an invisible owie)
My tummy is hot in my jammies.
My pull up is hot
My nightgown is too long.
I'm done sleeping (while standing in the living room at 9:45 pm dressed in her panties and holding a shirt)
I want to watch Mickey/Dora/[insert kid show here] on the tablet (at 3 am)
I have sand in my eye. (How did you get sand in your eye - stupid question, I know) Sara put it there. (No she didn't. You haven't seen Sara in 5 hrs since you left school.) Ok, Emma did it. (sigh.)

Is your preschooler smarter than a laundry hamper?

Brenna has decided that napping is over-rated.

I, on the other hand, do not agree. In fact, I think that naps are highly under-rated - both for myself and for my child.

Since, I am still bigger, older, and theoretically smarter, than my child, I get to make the decisions about who naps. And I decide that Brenna naps.

Granted, I can't actually force her to sleep. At least not without resorting to off-label, double-the-recommended dosage use of common OTC medication. So the rule for nap is: You don't have to sleep but you do have to stay in your room and be quiet for a minimum of 90 min. (Or until mommy decides she has had sufficient quiet time, whichever is longer.)

Which brings us to naptime this past Saturday. Brenna is in her room playing quietly. She has only come out about 35 times in the first 15 min to see if nap time is over. Under threat of not getting to go to her playdate later in the afternoon, she has retreated and remained in her room for about 25 consecutive minutes.

Mommy is enjoying some ACC basketball and a complete lack of 3-year old chatter.

Suddenly, Brenna is screaming bloody murder like she is being attacked in her room. I quickly look around and see that the cat is snoozing happily in a sunspot so it's not his fault, and I take off running toward Brenna's room and the hysterical screams.

I fly into her room expecting...well, I don't even know what, something horrible for sure.

Instead, I am confronted with the sight of my child trapped in her collapsable flower laundry hamper! (just like this one --------->)

Somehow, she has managed to pull the hamper over her head and cover her entire body. (I guess that's not much of a feat when you consider that she is a whopping 34" tall)

Then she managed to get her knees curled up near her chest. I guess she then decided that maybe being in a laundry hamper wasn't all that and getting out would improve her play time. At which point, it appeared that she became stuck and had fallen over on her side, where she was doing quite the impressive immitation of a turtle stuck on its back (well, minus the screaming. I've never heard a turtle scream.)

In response to this sight I had a massive parent empathy fail and burst into laughter while extracting my hysterical child from her laundry hamper jail. (I did maintain sufficient humanity to giver her a hug immediately...while still laughing of course.) It goes without saying that my laughter was not appreciated. Nor was my first comment to her, "Well, sweetie, I guess that's why we put laundry and not our bodies into laundry hampers."

This comment was met with the most pathetic tear-stained look. And I managed to redeem myself somewhat by saying "I bet that was really scary!" She agreed with this statement wholeheartedly.

Needless to say, nap was over after that.

Lions, tigers, and bears! oh my!

a quick recycle from facebook...

Some people have lions flanking the enterance to their home.



We have a potted cat.

Erin has bunny rabbits in her ear

From the 'conversations with my preschooler' files...

Brenna is off of school for the next 2 weeks.
That means that mommy is off of work for the next 2 weeks.
Not exactly a tropical vacation but c'est la mommy vie, I guess.

Anyway, what does one do with a 3-yr old who is out of school in the days leading up to the National Celebration of St. Conspicuous Consumption (also known as Christmas - no offense meant to all my friends who celebrate)? Well, run errands and buy stuff, of course!

Brenna is back in her big-girl bed which means that she is, and consequently I am, up long before the sun, so we dawdle until around 8:30 am when I think at least some of the stores will be open. Maybe not the dry cleaners, but at least the ones participating in the mad shopping rush.

Brenna's self portrait

I load Brenna into the car and pull out of the driveway.
B: Mommy, what we going to do today?
M: We are going to run errands.
B: Why we going to run erins?
M: Because we...
B: I have a friend Erin.
M: You have a friend at school named Erin?
B: Yes, at school. I have a friend. Erin at school. She not at school now. She at home.
M: Oh. right. Your friend is at home with her mommy and daddy.
B: No. She not at school.
M: Yes, because school is closed.
B: No. She not at school because she got something in her ear.
M: She got something in her ear? What did she get in her ear?
B: A bunny rabbit!
M: A bunny rabbit??
B: Yes! She got a bunny rabbit in her ear!

Yes, I suppose getting a bunny rabbit in your ear would prevent you from going to school for a while.

Nola - not a bunny rabbit but if you put her in your ear you'd probably wish you'd found a bunny rabbit instead

Translation of preschool-ese: What "I love..." really means to a 3 yr old

Recently Brenna has discovered the phrase "I love _____." It's quite cute. Usually it is a random pronouncement and "love" is stated with importance and verve. For example, "I LOVE purple...And pink. Yes, I LOVE them."

It is often associated with food - usually foods that I've never seen her eat and occasionally she has actually professed dislike for. For example, Brenna recently announced that she LOVEs pizza. However, I have never actually seen her EAT pizza. In fact, when presented with the opportunity to eat pizza she generally chooses to eat anything but pizza.

Or it comes in response to a question that really doesn't need that sort of qualification. For example, "Brenna, it's bath time. Are you ready to take a bath?" "Yes mommy!! I LOVE bath time!"

And it may be followed by and linked to something she really does love, like chocolate.

So the exchange sounds something like this:

M: Brenna, it's bath time. Are you ready to take a bath?

B: Yes mommy! I LOVE bath time!!

M: Great, I'm so glad you love bath time. Let's go get you undressed.

B: No!

M: But you love bath time and you have to take off your clothes to take a bath.

B: NO!

[exteremely pained sigh from mommy]

B: If I take a bath can I have some chocolate? I LOVE chocolate!

Thus, I have now figured out that when Brenna says "I LOVE ____!" it really only means that she loves to say that she loves _____, not that she actually loves _____.

Got it?

Oh, and she is going to try to sleep in her big girl bed tonight. Last attempt at the big girl bed was a complete fail with Brenna getting up at 5 am, coming into our room, and having a screaming meltdown on the floor when told it was not time to wake up and she needed to go back to her bed...or at least to her room....or really anywhere but screaming on the floor at the foot of our bed.

Yeah, we LOVED that.

Mommy, that HO WEIRD! - more preschool conversations

Brenna is absolutely enamored of the holiday lights. So, each evening after I pick her up from school, I try to drive a different way home so we can look at new lights. As we were driving home last night, Brenna was pointing out lights and suddenly she says...

B: Mommy, the lights. That ho weird!

M: What?!

B: It ho weird!

M (not even sure where to start with this one): So weird?

B: Yes, ho weird!

M (ok, at least she isn't practicing her new vocabulary word describing the working girl who stands on the corner of Ponce & N. Highland): What's so weird?

B: Nevermind, mommy.

ok. will do.