So I was planning a lovely round-up of our advent Christmas books for today’s post, but then poor Cal broke his arm…

Yesterday I was getting Ellis dressed and Calvie was playing at the table in his brother’s room. Calvie reached for an ornament on the little tabletop Christmas tree and he tumbled off the child-size chair. I heard a thud and said a bad word as I scooped him up. He was really crying, which is unusual for my tough little guy who has never cried getting vaccines. He also wanted to comfort nurse which is even more unusual for him. I held him for about ten minutes until he calmed down and then he went off to play. He was playing on the ground and I noticed that he couldn’t lift himself up into a crawling position. I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and took his jacket off to check his arm. He had a red mark right above his wrist and I immediately thought “Oh no, I bet this is broken.”

I called the doctor who told us to go to urgent care. Aunt Stacy raced over to our house to be with Ellis. As soon as she arrived Cal started playing. He was laughing and using both hands. He even had a toy around his wrist at one point and it didn’t seem to phase him. My initial gut reaction said “broken” but now he seemed fine. Our vet happened to be right outside so I asked him to take a quick look at Cal’s arm because he is a fellow parent and he spends all day examining the small bodies of beings who can’t say what is wrong with words. He examined Cal’s wrist and other than being slightly tender we couldn’t find anything wrong. We let Cal go outside to play. We were watching him chase the chickens in the backyard and he fell down in the grass and again couldn’t push himself up.

I decided that even with almost no symptoms he needed to be checked out. So off we went to urgent care. The first doc we saw was incredibly preoccupied with the fact the Cal bumped his head when he fell. He kept calling it a “head injury.” He was obviously not a parent and I didn’t know how to explain that head bumping is a primary activity for a 15 month old. I figured it would not be reassuring to tell the doc he does that every day. I knew his head was fine and I was pretty sure his wrist wasn’t. They finally took him to get an x-ray, but at that point he was so happy I was starting to feel silly for being there at all. But then we got the x-ray back and sure enough he has a buckle fracture to the radius.

Unfortunately they couldn’t cast him at the urgent care we were at. We had to head over to an orthopedic urgent care (didn’t know that was even a thing) and go through the whole urgent care process again (co-pay and all). By this time it was late in the day and Adam was able to meet us on his way home from work, which was such a relief since I was pretty maxed out on dealing with doctors, bureaucracies and a toddler.

So for the next 3 weeks Calvin will be rocking a festive red cast. And now we know how to get him fixed up the next time this happens. And I am pretty sure with that daredevil there will be a next time. In fact I have been prepared for a broken bone since Cal became mobile. His first crawl was up the stairs. He climbed out of his crib on his first birthday. I knew it was only a matter of time before our little humpty dumpty would need to be put back together again.