Ian has had an eventful and fairly painful 6 weeks or so. It all began with a failed escape attempt. I had brought the kids home from school and, as usual, Anya had an entire menagerie to unload besides her backpack and lunch box and coloring (it's amazing what the "essentials" for riding in the car consist of). As usual, I left the interior door between the garage and the house open so she could make the requisite trips back and forth. She had also wanted to get the mail, so I had left the garage door open (which I NEVER do). I walked Ian to his room, walked from his room to the kitchen, and had just stopped at the junk drawer when Anya started screaming that Ian had gotten out. (This was amazing because it had been less than 30 seconds since I'd dropped him off in his room and I was standing where I should have seen him walk past the kitchen door.) Clayton, from the office, and I dropped everything and sprinted outside to find a hysterical Anya (who had tried her best to stop him, but the size difference won out) pointing to Ian, who had made it to the middle of the road and was headed back. It had to be his plan from the beginning or he wouldn't have had time to initiate it. We're glad Anya realizes the severity of most situations involving Ian! Luckily this ended up a relatively painless (not counting the 3 near heart attacks) event.
We were less fortunate the next time. Over Easter weekend, we took a trip to Washington, D.C. We spent hours on the road getting there (it's about 12.3 hours, but who's counting?) and let the kids watch movies on the DVD player to make it more bearable. Needless to say, by the time we reached the hotel Ian had become addicted. The first night he was exhausted enough that he fell asleep relatively quickly. But the second night he wanted to continue watching movies -- and he had very specific opinions about which he should be allowed to view. When his "demands" weren't met, he spent much of the night whining and becoming increasingly upset (i.e. louder and louder). In fact, because we had neighbors, I spent over an hour out in the car with him from about midnight to 1:00am because we had been unable to calm him down. Basically he was really short on sleep.
Due to sleep deprivation (and a quarter size blister he had developed on his heel during a field trip to the zoo when his braces hadn't been put on correctly -- sorry, no picture there!), he was increasingly clumsy and accident prone. While I was mixing his medicine and Clayton was getting his breakfast together (we brought it up from downstairs because he hadn't been awake in time to go down), we let him wander the bedroom area of the hotel room. We heard a crash and saw that he had fallen. I picked him up and led him into the living area, where Clayton was ready to feed him. He was whining, but he had been for a couple of days and we didn't think anything of it -- until I noticed that there was blood all over the side of his pajama shirt. We quickly discovered that he had sliced a big, relatively deep cut in his elbow (the bottom scar in the picture, now about 6 weeks old). The soap from the bathroom and the hand sanitizer from my purse were the best we could come up with for cleaning it and I have learned to always have bandaids with me, so we patched him up the best we could. Fortunately it was no worse or it would have required far more than what I carried with me. As it was, he did bleed through the bandaid a couple of times. I just can't believe he wasn't more upset by it!
The next incident also involved the same elbow (which was still healing three weeks later because he had reopened it repeatedly using the elbow as leverage). He was upstairs, a place we consider generally safe for him, and Anya came to tell us he was upset. Clayton came to get him, again for breakfast, and found him sitting at the top of the stairs whining (still not crying). Clayton thought he had maybe hurt his foot and led him downstairs to change and then feed him. After he had him at the table, I went to Ian's room to make his bed. I noticed a spot of blood and called out to see if Clayton had noticed him bleeding. Upon examination we again found that his elbow was bleeding -- gushing, actually-- and there was a little pool of blood on the table. He had sheared a big chunk, VERY deep, from his elbow. We knew there was no way to stitch it, but it had gone several layers deep. We cleaned it, stopped the bleeding the best we could, and again bandaged it. Because it was so deep and so tender, we kept bandages on it for a solid two and a half weeks (first with regular bandages, then with gauze) to protect it (you should see how he thumps it next to the tv as he gets excited about his movies), but it wasn't drying and scabbing well. We finally had to let it go uncovered for the last few days and now, three weeks later, you can see how it's recovering. He'll probably have permanent scars from those two.The next day, because he had been so accident prone, we fed him and got him ready for church and then, as Clayton helped David and Kathy print boarding passes and I finished getting ready for church, we put him in his bedroom and put his gate up. Not 5 minutes later, we heard a big bump and Ian became hysterical. He was sobbing and his face was all red.
After initially trying to comfort him, Clayton and I took him to the bathroom to try to clean him up -- he had fallen, probably against the frame of his bed, and scraped the side of his nose and next to his eye. There was no bandaging to be done this time, but it was very red and swollen, besides being cut, for about two days. Once the swelling went down and the scrapes themselves looked a bit better, he had quite a black eye developing (his teachers initially thought he had marker under his eye -- which was mysterious since he vehemently avoids markers and crayons whenever possible). A couple days into it, it actually looked a little better. But we decided we needed to take a picture to help us remember all he's been through lately. So, the picture gives an idea, but was not at its peak.
Not to be outdone, Anya, either feeling left out or in hopes of having social services come and remove the children both from my care, insisted that we also take a picture of the scratch she got on her leg from a run in with a shelf at Walmart. We had a hard time locating it, so she said she'd show us in the picture. We zoomed in and here it is... After all the cut-up, black and blue pictures, you're probably wondering at this last addition. Let me preface it by saying that Ian has been having more difficulty chewing and swallowing lately. In fact, as Ama has witnessed, sometimes he skips the chewing step almost altogether. As a result, we've had some pretty disturbing gagging episodes where it seems he's choking, though he can still breathe, because swallowing whatever large or sharp bit of food (Cheezits, for example) he has forgotten to chew is so painful. I was a little confused, though not terribly alarmed, when on the last day of school I came to pick him up and his teacher said he had done the gagging thing as one of the aids was changing him -- before snack or anything else had been given to him to eat. We talked for a few minutes, decided he seemed fine -- maybe allergies or nasal drainage gagging him as he lay back? -- and I didn't think more of it...until two days later when I pulled this earring, open as shown, from his diaper when I changed him.
I initially freaked out, then calmed myself because he appeared fine and there didn't seem to be any damage. After a reassuring call to the pediatrician, I was able to smile (though a bit grimly) at how quick his little hands are, though still sickened by the thought of what could have happened (and at the apparently worse things I'd read online about other children miraculously swallowing without injury -- think two sewing needles!).
After having removed the offending bed (which he was always banging his shins up on anyway), double checking every door through which we enter or exit, finding more ways to gate him off safely, and altering his diet to include only small, soft, non-metal pieces, hopefully we'll have a long, uneventful spell before I have to chronicle more injuries!
