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At 7:30 AM Friday morning, Elizabeth was climbing on the couch (climbing is a very regular occurrence in this house) and she reached over the back to get something off the floor. She went over the edge and started crying pretty hard. I went over to console/lecture about "how many times do I have to tell you not to climb on things because you're going to get hurt," when I saw her arm and immediately knew it was broken.

I forwent (?) the lecture and proceeded to freak out and yell for Nate's help. Thank goodness he was still home, because I was a mess and definitely couldn't have handled it on my own.

First of all, don't mind the hat that makes my head look ridiculously huge. My very dirty hair would have been even more disturbing.

Most of you probably know that I avoid the ER like the plague and generally think my kids will be fine. In this case, I knew there was no avoiding it, so we headed over.

The x-rays determined that both bones in her lower right arm were broken enough to need to sedate her to set them, and that we would most likely be there until 1 PM at the earliest. So we decided to have Nate take Harrison to Logan's (Mina has become my go to emergency girl! Thank you SO much, again!) and he went in to work for a few hours. The reason we had to wait so long was so for the breakfast in her system to get digested so that she wouldn't have any complications during sedation. So we waited and tried to keep her happy and entertained for 3 hours. They gave her a teddy bear and wrapped up it's broken arm too. That helped a little.

She was pretty enamored with this tiny bottle of Tylenol. (I was actually trying to get another good picture of the broken arm, which she was very opposed to, so I had to pretend to be taking a picture of the Tylenol). She hated the IV (I don't blame her, I hate IVs too), but I was grateful that she'd only have to have one poke for all the different meds they needed to give her.

They eventually put a splint on it. Then they moved her to a new room for the sedation and resetting. At this point she was very ready to go home and not wanting me to take anymore pictures!

She got very concerned when all the people came in for the procedure. She wanted my face right next to her face. I obliged and watched her quickly get "out of it" when they gave her the medication in her IV. The weird thing about this sedation was that her eyes were open, but she wasn't "there." They sent me out to the waiting room while they reset it. I don't know what would have been more difficult -- watching them reset the bones or waiting by myself. Thankfully, it went really fast and they brought me back to wait for her to come out of the sedation. They said she had asked for mommy a few times while I was gone. Sad.

She was pretty funny coming out of it. She recognized me right away, but was definitely not fully there. After a little while she said, "What do I look like? Halloween? Can I have some candy?" She kept doing funny things with her mouth. It was cracking me up.


Then she got pretty happy and had some apple juice.

It didn't take long for her to come down off her high and crash. She got REALLY fussy and cranky and then just conked out.

So we finally got home at about 2 o'clock. She laid on the couch, watched movies, and milked her situation for all it was worth. She ate skittles and chips and ice cream, she repeatedly asked to sit up, then lay back down, and wanted to be carried everywhere she wanted to go "because my arm is broken." Yes, I know, but your legs are not broken, sweet child. I decided to indulge her for one day.

In true Watabe fashion, we went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner, because Chick-Fil-A makes everything better.

She was very disappointed that we wouldn't let her play on the play place. She ended up pretty whiny by the end, but a promised trip to King Soopers cheered her up again. (Who wouldn't want to go ride in a car shopping cart and get a free cookie?)

By the end of our King Soopers shopping, both kids were completely falling apart. In trying to get her ready for bed we found ourselves in a predicament with her shirt. It wouldn't come off over the cast. It was brand new shirt and I really didn't want to cut it. Either did she. "Don't cut it, it's special to me." But we had to snip it a little to get it off.

She went to sleep watching Charlie Brown, but woke up again around 10:30 and was very distraught. The plan was for her to sleep in the bed with me and Nate and Harrison would have a sleepover downstairs. I was envisioning a night of crying and really didn't want to deal with that after our exhausting day, so we called over a friend to help give her a blessing. By the time he got here, she was asleep again, but they gave her a blessing anyway, and she slept soundly through the night. She did wake up crying at about 6:15 and said, "My armie still hurts, but daddy said it would feel better today." She had more Tylenol and watched Lion King and then went back to sleep until 10 AM. I think she just need a lot of sleep, because she was very happy and has been 100% herself today. It's great to have her back and gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the recovery.

My other great hope of the situation is that Harrison will be motivated to be nicer to his sister. He was very concerned about her and kept giving her hugs and kisses at the hospital. He said he was worried about her while he was at school and keeps saying that he feels bad for her. I hope having the cast on will be a visual reminder that he needs to be soft with her and can't hurt her. I'm hoping that after 4-6 weeks of that, he will have kicked his habit of picking on her (at least physically). We'll see.

I am thankful for modern medicine, good insurance, that Nate was home, the sweet nurses and good doctors, the priesthood, that it happened on a day that we didn't have anything going on (unlike last Friday when we went to Wicked), Chick-Fil-A, movies, and the care and concern of friends and family.

That's our breaking news.