Stitches

Yesterday afternoon the children and I were cleaning the room to get ready for a party. A stuffed animal party. We had covered the little trampoline with a blanket and were setting stuff up.

The boys were running around, I don't know exactly what was going on. All the sudden I heard a loud scream. I followed the sound and saw Isaac covered in blood. I cleaned him enough to find the source of the bleeding. Then the Holy Spirit granted me strong guidance and presence of mind.

I calmly told the children to get their shoes (except Isaac who left barefoot). I put some damp paper towels and an icepack on the source of the bleeding (a 2 cm gash on his forehead) I then asked Abby to hold the icepack in place while I loaded baby Sarah into her carseat. Then we loaded into the van. Sam couldn't get his shoes on so he carried them. Abby helped Isaac to keep the icepack on as I drove us to the hospital.

I called my dad, who met us at the hospital. He took the Abby, Sam, and Omi back to his house. Isaac was quickly triaged and we were sent to a little room to wait for the doctor.
The nurse put sterile water on the wound. Then the doctor came and injected some numbing medicine into the wound. A few minutes later she came back and stitched it up. It took three stitches. Then all we had to do was wait for the paper work and check out.

The doctor said that children Isaac's age usually have to be sedated, so she was extremely impressed with Isaac. She also said that if he had required sedation we would have been there all night.

I called Paul from the ER. Then I picked up the other kids, who had just finished eating dinner. Paul, Isaac and I had dinner at McD's and all of the children had ice cream.

Then we came home and had our party.

By the end of the day I felt as though I was ten years older. I'll have to check for more gray hair now.

Thankfully, Isaac is doing well now. He is such a trooper and such a blessing to me.

And I praise God who had all of us in his hands the whole time.

Macaroni

Those of you who know my children well, may think I am going to post about their love for pasta. You would be wrong.

You see, I have been doing some research in preparation for the history lesson tomorrow about the shot heard round the world. (April 19, 1775).

One of the sources included a lesson about Yankee Doodle.

Yankee - An American
Doodle - A fool (from the low German -dodel)

Macaroni - The height of fashion in the 1770's was the Maccaroni wig which was warn by the most sophisticated British noblemen.

So the song is saying basically - That foolish American thinks that he can be sophisticated and fashionable by putting a feather in his hat instead of buying a fancy wig.

Originally the song was sung by the British to mock the Americans. But as the Americans began to win the war, they took the song as their own. In a since they were taking pride in their lack of sophistication. (I'd rather wear a hat with a feather in it than some silly wig).

Over the course of the years the British and Americans made more and more lyrics to the song and taunted each other back and forth with it.

If the British had won, would the song have survived in some other form? Who knows.

I learn so much more by teaching my children than I ever learned in school.

allergies

Allergies run strong in our family, so it's not surprising that Isaac had some things show up on his recent allergy test. However, The number of allergens was somewhat surprising. He is allergic to just about everything in the environment, most significantly to cats.

He is also allergic to a lot of foods, some of these are a bit unusual. Here is the list:

Acacia Gum
Karaya Gum
Cottonseed
Sesame Seed
Mustard
Lamb
Egg
Rye
Cinnamon
Sweet Potato
Orange
Apple
Pear
Cherry
Codfish
Salmon
Clam
Oyster
Shellfish Mix
Cabbage
Cauliflower

He had the strongest reactions to shellfish and sweet potatoes.

It is no wonder the poor little guy hasn't been feeling well.

Isaac has been adjusting well to his new diet. Of all of these things, cottonseed is the most difficult to avoid. It happens to be present in a large number of foods ranging from McDonald's Fries, to saltines, to Laffy Taffy.

On the bright side, he is feeling much better already.

This would be a post

but someone wanted my seat

so here are some eggs

Happy Pi Day

I took this apple pi pie to Don's folks when we went there for dinner this evening. Nobody noticed the pi. Given Don thought me a little silly for doing that, it is just as well.

We had the pie with ice cream, which always reminds me of a T-Shirt a girl I knew in high school had. It showed a picture of pi with a scoop of ice cream on it and had the words "Pi a la mode, it's irrationally good" written on it.

autotune the news

turtle fence

Adjusting to life with 5

Sarah has had a cold the past week. She is finally seeming to get better. But she seems to want to be held all the time. I am suffering from severe lack of sleep. But otherwise we are doing well.

Sarah seems to be sensitive to wheat and milk. These are easy enough to give up.

Isaac has been having lots of allergy issues lately so we had to take him off of wheat as well. He seems to be getting better. But it doesn't help that he refuses to take his asthma medicine unless he's REALLY sick.

Abby participated in the science fair on Saturday. Paul posted about it on his blog. I was sad that I couldn't go because of Sarah being sick.

Now we are working on getting ready for the geography fair.

Well I better go and get a load of diapers in the wash before Sarah wakes up.