All I want for Christmas is no broken bones!

Jack had a very exciting Christmas eve this year, which involved another trip to the ER! Daddy was running down the stairs hurrying to get to church so Jack could see all the big kids put on their Christmas pageant, slipped and fell, and Jack's foot unfortunately got caught between the stair steps and daddy's bony hip. Now, Jack is a tough kid-- let's remember he took his own trip down the stairs at 9 months old and basically shook it off and was fine within minutes. But this was the most upset I've ever seen him, and nothing could calm him down. Luckily, that worked to our advantage because the triage nurse decided he must've broken something just based on how he was carrying on, and got us into our own room immediately. (This allayed my fears that we would spend all of Christmas eve in the ER waiting room, catching every infectuous disease possible from the other people sick enough to be in the ER, which was nice.) It took a while to get some x-rays and in the meantime I think I sang the song my mom taught us ("little house in the forest wood, little man by the window stood, saw a rabbit running by, frightened as can be...") about 300 times because it was the only thing that kept Jack from wailing.  As soon as I was done he'd say "more, more!" and he was just teetering on the brink of wailing again, so I kept myself on continuous loop. X-rays showed there may be a fracture in his proximal meta-tarsal, and we need to go back to orthopedics in a few days to make sure, so in the meantime they fitted him with a splint. You can imagine how well that went over with the 2-year-old who hates to have anything clinging to him or touching him, just barely tolerates clothing and certainly does not tolerate socks. Now he has one giant sock over his big splinted foot and he looks at us plaintively and says "take it off!" over and over. And I try to do my best toddler-mommy empathy ("I know you don't like wearing it, it's no fun to have a big foot that you can't get rid of, huh?"), but it doesn't seem to make him feel much better about the situation.

But they gave him a monkey in the ER. That earned the first smile of the evening since the accident.

What a great hospital! What a nice thing to think about for little hurt kids on Christmas eve. I will always remember that. And in addition to the cool splint (that Jack hasn't decided is cool yet, but we're working on it) and monkey, he got this great certificate of accomplishment:

He is in better spirits today. We spent most of the day on the bed. They told us to keep him off his foot until we know for sure if he needs a cast, and at the time I thought "yeah right, how am I supposed to keep this guy from running around?" But I think he knows something's not right, and hasn't really been testing it. So maybe it will be easier to make it through to Monday than I thought.

And maybe on Monday we'll find out it's not fractured, he just has abnormal metatarsals (we'll call them "special") and this will just be a good story for Chaplin/Kramer family lore. It will be, regardless. Just slightly more of a pain to have a cast. So my Christmas wish for Jack, beyond all the great presents he got today, is to have strong healthy bones that heal themselves overnight. Like Wolverine! That's not too much to ask for, right? Santa? He's been a very good boy this year, after all.