Well, hi there! Did you miss me? I have!
I haven’t written in a while because I have been outrageously busy. With teeth, ligaments and lice.
Teeth: The girls were getting ready for sleep away Girl Scout camp. This was Luna’s first time, Soleil’s second. On the Thursday before the camp, Luna was in a particularly difficult mood. She was refusing to listen and being, 7. She was nervous about going to sleep away camp and her general reaction when nervous is to be a totally pissy person! Yea us!
I was out taking the dog for a walk and she wanted to join me on her scooter. Being in a pissy mood, she refused to either put on shoes or put on a helmet. To be honest, I wasn’t worried about it and I didn’t see why I should force it when she was already grumpy. Fine. Come along. She was in a cheerful mood, on her scooter, running one naked foot along the road and the other foot on the scooter. When I asked her if it hurt, she said no. She was in a positively Great Mood. And I started to think "See! Sometimes, giving in a little is okay!"
Then we got to the top of the hill. We happen to live on a street that has a big Mother of a hill. It’s one of those hills you have to get off the seat of your bike to climb and REALLY fun going down fast. In fact, I often put my car in neutral and we let gravity take the car down the hill. This day, however, the fates were not so much fun and gravity decided to school Luna. Actually, I think it was physics that decided to school her. She was 1/3 of the way down when she realized she was going too fast. No problem, she started pressing on the brake. And this is where it all went wrong. The friction of the brake on the wheel warmed the brake to the point it was hurting her naked foot. She decided to jump off the scooter. She almost did it, but she forgot one of Newton’s Laws. "A body in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force". She jumped and her momentum propelled her forward. She continued this way until her face was acted upon by the road. I saw all of this in slow motion. I knew she would cry, but when she got up and turned toward me, I RAN. Her face was covered in fresh blood. Her entire face. And blood was dripping from her lips. One of her front top teeth was missing and the other was hanging on by a thread. Fortunately, they were both baby teeth, but still. I picked her up, ran towards home while calling. Soleil answered the phone and I told her to tell Dad to meet me at the door with TOWELS.
Turns out she mostly did a road rash and most of the blunt force trauma was on her teeth. Within a day, the second tooth fell out. She is a little difficult to understand and we are trying to keep scar cream on at night and sunscreen on during the day. One of the most frustrating parts of this little adventure was that the day camp refused to take her the next day for fear of infection. We were seeing the doctor that day anyway, so I just kept her with me at work. The doctors were amazed she didn’t break her nose or orbit. She had bruising around her left orbit and the bridge of her nose suffered lacerations, as did her front gums.
2 weeks later, it was only her teeth that look funny. She knows DAMN WELL that she should have worn shoes and a helmet and even told me that she should have and she was sorry that she didn’t listen to me!
Here is a photo of the day she injured herself. We got most of the blood cleaned up:
(sorry- just turn you head sideways)
After the kids returned from camp, we enjoyed swimming at the pool. It was very nice and Luna could put her head under water now that the injuries had healed. We decided to head home for lunch with Soleil and I going first. Luna was finishing her slushy so we rode our bikes home. Two houses away from our house, Soleil’s wet swimsuit caused her to slip off her bike seat. She slammed her feet down to stop her bike. Unfortunately, she also learned about momentum as the bike kept moving forward and hyper-extended her right foot backwards after it got caught under a pedal. She crumpled to the ground and I was able to calm her, get her home and get ice on her.
Within 10 minutes, it was clear I needed to get her x-rays. Her ankle was very swollen and she was getting nauseated. We got her a small lunch, I ate, and we drove off to the second closest hospital. After my bee sting experience where they left me in a hallway and let me pass out in the waiting area, I was NOT going to the closest. She allowed me to wheel her in and we waited. There was another girl in the waiting room and after a few minutes they were talking. Turns out this girl was also from Spaceford. And this girl was also in Soleil’s upper elementary in Spaceford. Then we discovered they were in the same grade AND the same class for the fall! She was there with an earache.
It was a quick 2 hours to get Soleil x-rayed, splinted and up on crutches. We had to follow up with our doctor, but she didn’t think there was a break.
The pediatrician checked her out Monday and declared it a torn deltoid ligament based on the motions that caused the most pain. Sigh. It would take 2-3 weeks to fully heal and she will be more likely to injure this again in the future.
yeah yeah, just tilt 90 degrees. Too tired to fix it.
Now that it was Tuesday and Soleil had been injured for 4 days, and Luna’s face was mostly cleared, I noticed something in Luna’s hair. It looked like a nit. Shit. Sure enough, it was. I spent 2 hours combing her hair and removing about 100 lice and nits. Soleil had nothing. Whew!
I was a good kid and called day camp to say that I combed her out. They called me back the next morning saying she still had them and come pick her up. Turns out that most of the kids in her group had them. Why is it that this is the ONLY place my kids have gotten lice? I did a frantic web search and found a professional nit-picker. $300 and 3 hours later, Luna was mostly lice free. I watched her techniques in case I need to do it again (please no!).( okay, just by writing this, my head is itchy)
We used our traditional Listerine treatment afterwords and I found 5-6 bodies. Then we did the olive oil overnight treatment. I did head checks every day for a while. She is fine.
So this is the major reason I haven’t been writing. I have been swamped. Totally swamped. I cannot keep up with my life anymore.
But I will try!
