CRUNCH!!!!!!!

Owie! Owie, BIGGGGGGGGGGG OWIE! Today was a little crazy. Ok, so you think every day is a little crazy around here but to us "crazy" is a whole other level than what YOU'RE used to. So if my normal is crazy to you, then my crazy is probably just about unfathomable! (see, it's so crazy here, THAT didn't even make sense to you did it?????????)

With much effort, we managed to get to preschool on time today. Small victory but I'll take what I can get :)

While they were there, I decided to get started on spending my birthday money from Murray's parents. I looked for a fall jacket that's nicer than a windbreaker but less fancy than a dress coat. As usual, when you have specific parameters for something, it is impossible to find. I checked at Mark's Work Wearhouse, Reitmans & Winners and only came up with one possible. A whopping $24.99 later I came out with a mediocre (but RED!) coat. As I was transferring my pocket contents, I realized the new coat didn't have any means of containing my treasures and the pockets aren't even angled so that your stuff will fall down into them. They're just straight up and down and risky. I only had a quick stop at the pet store to look for an ID tag, what could go wrong? Off I went. Then I zoomed back to pick up the kids and realized I couldn't find my credit card anywhere. New pockets are empty, it's not in my wallet, not on my seat, not on the floor of the car, don't see it anywhere. Crap.

I grab the kids & we race back to the parking lot so we can search for it. Once everyone has disembarked, I shut the door. Only to notice Honey has tucked her fingers in the opening. Too late the door has already fully closed on her tender little hand. I whip it back open in a split second of total silence. Maybe I was fast enough that it didn't really pinch? Nope. Full wail was quick to follow. I jammed my thumb in a car door when I was a kid and it hurt like the dickens so I was pretty sure that having your entire hand in there must be way worse. (although in my case, the car door was locked and my grandparents had already gone inside & didn't believe me when I was screaming for help!). I scooped her up and hugged her tight while making sure the other 2 weren't wandering off in the parking lot and scanning around for a flash of silver plastic & hoping some fraudster wasn't Ebaying his way to my financial doom.

Of course there wasn't a glint to be seen & poor Honey Bunny wasn't feeling any better. I held on to her & ran into a couple of the nearby stores, with the other 2 close on my heels, to see if the card had been found but there had been no sightings. I got everyone back in the car & phoned Murray to ask him to call the credit card company before some jerk spent all my birthday money and our retirement savings! I had visions of massive internet purchasing going on while I drove home.

When we got here, Honey still didn't want me to touch her hand and wouldn't let me wash it or put anything cold on it. So we just sat in the rocking chair and eventually she stopped crying and we had lunch. While I was getting that ready, Sweetie got Honey her Baabee & Lovey read her "The Hungry Little Caterpillar". They can be sooooooo nice to each other sometimes!

Murray & I were debating whether or not to take her to emerg. I knew "sore fingers" would be pretty low on the priority list if we went but didn't want to be wrong & have her grow up with broken twisted fingers because of my negligence.

I watched her over lunch & she mostly used her other hand to eat. She did let me put the cold gel pack thing on it & then when that got warm, we used a bag of corn from the freezer. She wasn't complaining about it and I was able to bend her fingers a bit without too much complaint. It was obviously painful but not brain rattling screaming painful. Then she wanted candy for dessert & she had to use both hands to unwrap the Kraft caramel she was working on. Her fingers were working fine for that & they were bending as she peeled the wrapper off. I phoned public health just in case & they agreed that we could avoid a lengthy visit to the ER.

The girls have been wanting to go swimming for some time. They'd done enough "jobs" to earn the trip and had wanted to go yesterday but it didn't work out so we had planned it for today. They'd been looking forward to it all day. We'd arranged to go with Teena & Boo who were meeting us there.... Honey was disappointed that she wasn't getting a trip to the doctor's office (probably remembering the time we had cheezies for supper when we had to wait 2 hrs at the after hours clinic when she had an ear infection last winter). I decided a soak in some chlorine wouldn't hurt & we took off for the pool.

The swimming part went fine, Honey's hand wasn't a problem .She jumped and swam and floated and played for an hour and a half. She had a great time. Lovey worked hard and managed to do a lot of swimming with her head above water and was quite pleased with herself. It was a slow day at the pool and one of the lifeguards kept staring at Lovey as she paddled around unassisted. She either thought I was very negligent to let her do that or was quite impressed to see a 4 yr old navigating the waters so well! (I'm going to be cocky & assume the latter! lol) Sweetie was more timid and didn't want to try to swim much & preferred to hang on the side and only swam when I pulled her out to the middle with me & gave her a big boost to glide back to the edge.

The getting ready to go home part was a disaster. We got through the showering & washing hair without incident. Somewhere around the hairdrying & getting dressed, things went downhill. Sweetie had a wicked meltdown & I still don't know what it was about. She shrieked and screamed for at least half an hour. After determining that I wasn't going to be able to determine or even solve her problem, I ignored her & worked on getting the other 2 dried off, dressed & hair brushed. Eventually all 3 were ready to go but it took them forever! By the end of it, Sweetie was screaming for Bunny (like I can materialize her out of nowhere?? she knew darn well that freakin' animal was at home!!!!!!!!) and continued it all the way home. When we got in the driveway, she bumped her hand into Honey's while trying to undo her buckle and although Honey was the one with the tender fingers, it was Sweetie who did all the sreaming about that. And kept it up for another half hour while the rest of us went inside to wait it out. By this time the brain scalding was almost more than I could bear. It probably sounds terrible that I left her in the car but having her inside doing that in my face would have been far riskier for her. I did open the windows & watch from the living room periodically. The constant noise was easy assurance that she wasn't running off anywhere and in that state I was pretty sure a kidnapper would quickly lose interest.

Once she decided her tactics weren't getting her anywhere, she got out of the car, closed the door & knocked at our front door to get in.

It was a pretty intense afternoon but they had fun at the pool, we have no broken bones and Old Nanny called to invite us over for lunch next week so all is well with our world!