Joey Four Finger

Well, we have our first really interesting story for our blog. I received a message at the office Thursday from the boys' school that there was an emergency. When I called back, they said that Joseph had gotten his finger caught in a door and someone needed to come. I wasn't overly concerned, especially since I had just talked to Cort and he was on his way to pick up the boys anyway and this seemed like something he could handle. But when I said that Cort should be there soon, the school still seemed concerned. Why, I asked, did they think it was broken? Ms. Karen replied, "Amy, the tip of his finger has been cut off." Oh.

At that moment, Cort walked in the door to the school and saw his son with his entire hand wrapped up in a bloody towel. Luckily, both Cort and I are pretty calm under pressure (although Cort is admittedly squeamish). Since you can't strap a 2-year-old with a bleeding, severed finger into a car seat and leave him alone, Joseph's teacher, Ms. Patricia, sat in the back of the truck holding Joseph's hand while Cort drove to my office to pick me up (the fingertip was in a cup of ice, so it could conveniently sit in the cup holder). I took over for Ms. Patricia, whom we left on a streetcorner downtown, and off we raced to Texas Children's Hospital. Cort even ran a bunch of red lights on the way.

Poor Joseph was screaming during most of the ride to the hospital. But Texas Children's was fabulous--or at least as fabulous as any place that you frequent only because of an emergency can be. We were ushered immediately back to the triage room (our pediatrician had called ahead). They evaluated the finger and took an x-ray to check for broken bones. (This was the first time I had the opportunity to look at it. I have to say that it looked pretty bad, because while it had cleanly cut off the tip, it mysteriously had not cut off the actual fingernail--so you could see exactly how much was missing. And it was just a bloody stump, which made it look worse.) They called for the hand surgeon and the "Child Life" specialist, the latter of whom is a person whose sole job is to comfort and entertain the children with toys, books, etc. Once Joseph got hooked up to the morphine, he had a pretty grand time for awhile.

Eventually, the hand surgeon showed up. I was a little wary when we discovered that his older brother had been a few years below me in law school. Was this guy old enough to be operating on my son? (Apparently so, and an even younger medical student did much of the operation.) The surgeon showed us the severed tip (this was the first time I'd looked at it). There was a bunch of tissue, a little tiny bit of bone, and the nail bed, in addition to the skin. He said that the nail bed won't regenerate and the whole thing could not be sewed back on, but instead he took out the bone and most of the tissue (leaving only enough for cushion) and sewed the skin over the open wound. He said it was 50/50 whether it will live or die. If we get lucky and it lives, then we just have to wait for it to heal. If it dies, he'll have to have another surgery to graft more tissue on it. Either way, he's going to have a short finger.

Joseph did fine with the surgery--since he was knocked out for it--but had a tough time coming out of the sedation. He got sick and generally didn't want to wake up, so he was a pretty miserable kid for a couple of hours. But he perked up when we finally left, and was very anxious to see Charlie.

So where was Charlie, you ask? We had called our friend Mike Bennett, whose daughter Cate is the same age as the boys, and Mike picked Charlie up at school. Apparently Charlie didn't think this was weird at all, and he happily went home with Mike and spent the evening with Mike, Shelley, and Cate. They were nice enough to report in periodically that he had found all the balls in the house, had eaten all his beef burgundy but none of his vegetables, and enjoyed a bath with Cate. He went to sleep over there in a pair of Cate's pajamas (thanks, Shelley, for not giving him pink ones). They luckily had an extra binkie we'd left over there, but he still had to go to sleep without his dog, blankie, and book. He did great. So great, in fact, that he apparently called Shelley and Mike "Mommy" and "Daddy" all night. We were happy you fared so well without us, Charlie, but that's going a little overboard.

We picked Charlie up on our way home with Joseph and got them home and to bed around 11pm. Everyone slept great. Joseph cried for awhile the next morning--not sure if his finger hurt, he still felt sick from the sedation, or was just supertired--but since then he's been back to his old self. He's got a big bandage on his finger, which we usually cover with a sock to keep it clean and keep him from perpetually flipping everyone the bird.

The boys' first trip to the dentist

Cort and I have both been out of town for work, so I'm a little late posting about this, but Tuesday morning was the boys' first trip to the dentist. We took them to a pediatric dentist, Dr. Cammarata. Both boys did really great.

The exam room has a great play area in the center that the boys enjoyed. They also got their pictures taken and got to pick out a new toothbrush. The new toothbrushes are different colors than their old ones, which makes it hard for Mom to remember whose is whose.

They each had their teeth cleaned by the hygienist, who was really great with kids. I hung out with Joseph, who was very reluctant at first. But he loved touching the cleaning apparatus, which tickled, and had picked out his toothpaste on his own (ok, with a little help - he picked orange). The hygienist finally convinced him to let her clean just one tooth, and pretty soon he was opening his mouth on command for her. Charlie went next and Cort hung out with him. He needed a little extra holding on to Daddy, but he also did very well (he picked the cherry toothpaste, for the record).

Both boys then saw Dr. Cammarata, who counted and checked out their teeth (Joseph had 20; Charlie 16). No cavities anywhere! Dr. Cammarata did recommend getting rid of the binkies soon, particularly for Joseph (which is interesting, because Charlie is much more attached to his binkie, but apparently the way Joseph holds his causing more of a problem with his bite). I'm not sure when we will try to kick the habit.

All in all, the visit went very well -- except for the fact that Charlie has had buyer's remorse for 2 days over the slinky he picked as a prize for being a good boy. Apparently he wishes he had picked the bear. He gets very upset every time he sees the slinky. It's going to be a long 6 months until our next dentist visit.

Poo Poo Pah

Ok, no pictures for this one. And I really hope no one but family is reading. We have exciting news to share -- we just found out that Joseph went poo poo pah at school yesterday! Translation for those who don't speak Joseph-ese: he had a bowel movement on the toilet ("poo poo" on the potty). We think he went pee pee pah, too, but aren't sure.

Apparently he woke up early from afternoon nap and Ms. Blanca, one of his teachers, snatched him up before he could wake up the other kids. He told her he had to "poo poo" and she asked him if he wanted to go on the potty. Mind you, we do this all the time at home and it has never been productive. It's just an opportunity for him to crawl around on the bathroom fixtures unconfined by his diaper and play with himself. Ms. Blanca didn't really expect him to do anything either. But he did! Apparently he was pretty amazed with his work product once she showed it to him.

Joseph seemed very proud of himself when Ms. Blanca told me, and again when I told Daddy. Charlie even got in on the praise for Joseph, which I think made him really proud.

We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo

This morning we went to the zoo. The boys wanted to show GranSan and Grandad, who are in town for the weekend, the "e-phants." We saw the elephants, as well as the giraffes, the lions, the tigers, the bears, the koala bears, and much, much more.

The trek through the zoo tired us all out, so we had to stop for a watermelon break. The Houston Zoo sells all sorts of fruits for only $1, and luckily Grandad had some money. These are some pictures of Charlie enjoying the watermelon break with his grandparents:

No great pictures of the "e-phants," but here's a really cute one of the boys at the elephant statute:

Heading home after a fun trip.

OK, I'm totally into this now

This was so easy, and so neat, that here I am posting again a mere four hours later. And yes, I'm still at work. If anyone from Baker Botts ever reads this, honestly this is so easy it's only taken me about 5 minutes to do each one. Plus about half an hour of browsing for fun, but that was permissible because I was eating lunch at the same time.

Not surprisingly, nothing of substance has happened in the past four hours that seems blogworthy, so I decided to peruse some old photos to polish up on my photo-insertion skills. I found these that we took when the boys were a few months old. We were going to get them framed and put them over their cribs. Like so many other things, we never got around to it. But wouldn't it have been cute if we did?

Trying out the blogging thing

A little over two years ago when Charlie and Joseph were born, we thought we were on the edge of technology because their pictures were up on our website by that evening. Turns out, merely two years later we are behind the curve. So we're going to try the blogging thing out. Hopefully it will allow us to keep friends and family updated about what our family is doing, with pictures too. We'll see if pictures are easy enough to do. This is an experiment. But a free one, so here goes.

For a first try, let's see if I can get a family picture on here.


Hey, not bad! This one is Cort and me with Joseph and Charlie on the deck at Grandad and GranSan's vacation house in Ruidoso. It's a little old - Labor Day of last year, I think - but it was the first family photo I could readily find.

I'm doing this at work, because a hearing I was supposed to be preparing for tomorrow was cancelled, so why not? But I should get back to work, plus I'm hungry, so this is probably it for now. I'll try to do this more often and see if we can keep the grandparents happy with updates.