You can't be worse than me. . .

I always seem to carry this sign above my head that is a big question mark. The question is always: 'Is she a good mom?' Well the truth of the matter is, much like The Wizard of Oz, behind the curtain is the reality. The skeletons are my 'bad' mommy signs that I've collected: Remember the fire alarm incident? The time my son wrote all over my daughter as I made plane reservations? Forgetting the car seat when I pick up the kids from school? Just to name a few.

Yesterday as I ran a bunch of errands that took me until 6:00 p.m., I managed to add another skeleton. We were walking into the co-op and my daughter decided she wanted to be carried. (A new thing with her) I told her no, I wasn't going to carry her every where, and her response was to stand (in this case right in front of the store at the sliding doors) and not move. Tate and I moved into the store and she stood there with a pouty look on her face like she was being tortured in some level of hell. I stood there and tried to calmly tell her to get her butt over to where we are, which of course she didn't listen to. So I decided that she was not going to get away with this attitude and I took her arm and made her come along with us. We were walking along quite nicely (although yes, she was complaining, and quite loudly), but we were making progress until she decided to punctuate her unhappy position by making her legs go limp which of course yanked her arm, and we heard a little 'pop'. I immediately let her arm go, and she was REALLY crying now and holding her arm. I coaxed her over to where we needed to be, telling her how sorry I was, but that dropping her weight was NOT a good idea. (I was very sorry about her arm, but I still wanted to let her know that her acting up was not okay)

But the problem was that she kept holding her arm, kept crying, and would not calm down. I was talking to her (still apologizing) and trying to order lunch for us, then trying to carry our lunch, and get both the kids upstairs to eat. I kept getting questions as to why she was crying and I kept explaining the whole story (my guilt eating at me), when I should have just said that she hurt her arm. She didn't get better all through lunch (and I was feeling so badly by now that I have started crying too) so I decided that I either needed to go to the ER or an Urgent Care Center. By this point I was afraid I had dislocated her elbow or wrist or even worse, broken her arm. Before I left the co-op I called the pediatrician's office to tell them what happened (I started out the voice mail message very well but ended up crying by the end. It's a miracle they understood the phone number I gave them). When they called me back (the DOCTOR called me back when usually it is a nurse, which totally freaked me out), I thought for sure that CPS was going to be called. I'm not kidding. That thought ran through my head many times yesterday.

The doctor then explained that this was a very common injury in children and likely it was just that something happened to a ligament in her arm. She then told me that she was going to talk me through how to fix her arm and get the ligament back where it should be. I was kind of hoping she was kidding because I kept thinking that I didn't know what the hell I was doing and felt overwhelmed. But I did it, and it WORKED! I couldn't believe it. I stopped at the Toyota dealership to get my oil changed (just in case this doctoring of my own actually worked), got out of the car, did the procedure and she has not said a word about her arm since. It was that fast.

So if you ever find yourself in this situation, you need to place gentle pressure on the outside of the elbow, extend the arm straight out with the palm up and then bend the arm until the palm touches the shoulder. The other solution to this situation is to not be an idiot like me. That is probably the better plan.