Boo Boo

As most of you know we had two boys and then came two girls.  We'd never seen the inside of a hospital or an Emergency Room, for that matter until Ellie. And you know how much of a hospital we saw with her the first year of her life.

The next hospital occurance was Julia in 2015.  Two, in fact - back to back. A fall at a playground with a head injury scare that turned out to be nothing and a trip in the house that split her forehead and required seven stitches.

Then Wednesday night of this week we were having a quiet evening. In fact I had just said to Jeff, "We are having a quiet evening."  Then Ellie stood up, took three steps and fell/tripped.  Her forehead came in contact with a spindle on a railing in our den and it split her sweet skin right open.  Flashbacks of Julia's injury hit us and we decided it's best to get it closed up so it will heal faster and scar less.

So Ellie and Mommy took a trip to the pediatric ER and had a great experience. It was fast (it was 7:30 pm), everyone was friendly and happy to meet Ellie, and Ellie was just happy to have WiFi on her iPad.  Here she is waiting to be seen.

Putting pressure on the injury, trying carefully not to block her view of Blue's Clues.

I blurred out the injury for those of you that might not like to see gashes of flesh.  A little "glue" was all it took during which she held perfectly still.

We headed back home, washed the blood off both of us and she went right to sleep. She hasn't touched it sense and when people at church today asked what happened they got a blank stare back from her as if she's forgotten!  We'll take the bandage off at the end of this week after 10 days and hopefully it will continue to heal with time.  I feel like she and I were both thinking, "This is nothing!" while we were going through it :).

2017!

Happy New Year Ellie friends!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas, I hope you did as well!

Remember the cold Ellie had at Thanksgiving?  It lasted until the week before Christmas!  We even had to brush up on some of our old skills and administer a steroid to her through a handy little machine called a nebulizer. This time they sent us one that looked like a seal!  She did pretty well with it and the other kids were really into watching her do it.

It took about 5 minutes each time for her to fully inhale the drug.  We had to do it four times a day.

Depending on where she was at the time of the treatment or what kind of mood she was in - the ipad was often used in conjuction with machine!  I love how her little hand popped up on the mask in this photo!

 We had a wonderful time visiting family over the holiday!

At mass, it was really hard to get a a good family photo for some reason.  We tried a couple different locations.

Here are some outtakes!

What is Ellie doing to Jacob?!

"Look, over there Ellie - smile!"

 Ellie loooooved opening presents this year.  Her presents. Your presents.  Everybody's presents!!!

Thankfully we've started the new year on a healthy foot!  Let's see if we can dodge any further bugs this season!