Snap! goes the wrist...

At the zoo the day after getting his cast. It looks (and almost feels!) like summer!!

Yep. Our first broken bone. And it WASN'T Nuala! Our lucky little Irish lad took a tumble on St. Patrick's Day (while chasing Nuala, so she was involved...), stuck his little arms out to catch himself, and that was that. He was at our friends' house, and when we picked him up 15 minutes later we (eventually) took him to the ER.

Unfortunately, the doctor there only x-rayed his elbow. Yeah. I totally thought they were getting a picture of his whole arm, but nope. So when we saw the x-rays of his ELBOW, and the doc said, "oh, looks like he has a partial dislocation of one bone in his elbow. You don't need to do anything, it'll be fine," we were a bit... surprised? How would he dislocate his elbow by sticking out his arms to catch himself? And why, oh WHY, does his wrist hurt? Which we again pointed out to the (very nice) doctor. He felt his wrist and said, "if it still hurts Monday, bring him back." So we left, although as we were driving away, I said, "wait! Why the heck didn't we tell him to x-ray his wrist right now?" Bad parents.

But Monday rolled around and of COURSE it still hurt. Since it was, you know, broken. Actually, all day Sunday I kept sneakily squeezing it to make sure he wasn't just ...being enthusiastic... about it. He was hoping for a cast. We took him to the embassy health unit first on Monday, and then back over to the hospital, but the doc from the embassy sent one of the Bulgarian nurses with me. She's very nice, but it was a bit annoying because I felt like I had a babysitter. And we got by fine on Saturday. The doctor spoke English. The x-ray tech spoke English. The registrar guy spoke English. And my Bulgarian is... well, it's not-so-good, but at least semi-existent. I unenthusiastically agreed to it mainly so we could use the embassy car and I wouldn't have to pay parking. 3 leva. That's about 2 bucks. I totally scored.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah. Yep, it's broken. The doctor took us to the "plaster room," at which point I remembered what my friend/broken bone consultant, Amy, said, and asked the doctor for the fiberglass cast instead of plaster. That is not the norm here, so he sent me down to the pharmacy to buy the stuff and then, with a very interested little audience, proceeded to wrap Bran's arm. He only has to wear it for two weeks, thank goodness. He was thrilled about it at first. In the car back to the embassy, he kept looking at it and saying stuff like,"It's like a ROBOT arm!" and "what can I do with my cast? I know! Break that karate board!" He also decided it's like Bumblebee's (the Transformer) arm when it turns into a gun. By that evening, though, the novelty had mostly worn off and he really wanted to take it off to sleep. Sorry, Bud! Also, it's stinky. Only two weeks... and already it's one down!

Now I'm just putting up cute pictures, with the very flimsy excuse of "look at his arm BEFORE it was broken!" But really just because they're cute.

And here! Not broken!

This is Saturday evening (Happy St. Patrick's Day!) after coming home from the hospital. Poor fella is grimacing because Nuala was grabbing onto his little arm to put it around her. Mean mommy forgot and was saying, "Just smile, Bran!" Smile right through the pain... poor boy.

A more smiley picture. His arm didn't really hurt unless you grabbed it.

And this is cute. Ironically, ONLY his broken wrist did not make it into the picture. But it didn't look any different. Only on Monday did it even begin to look a smidge more swollen than the other one. Also, I have no idea why Maeve is showing us her tummy. But cuteness needs no reason.

Happy cast boy! He's let me and Z and Nuala sign it, but doesn't seem to care much for getting everyone to do it. Plus we keep forgetting to take markers with us to places like church, and playgroup, etc.

And, yes! Just when we were resigning ourselves to the penguin life, the snow melted, we found our grass, and the SHORTS came out! And popsicles. It is unreal and we love it.

(Oh, and the title is reminiscent of the lovely post "Pop! Goes the elbow!" detailing Bran's dislocated elbow -- actually dislocated, not just pretend like this time -- back when he was two. Ahhhh, memories...)