Three weeks down...

Sorry for the lack of updates.  It's a bit crazy around here.

Micah saw his orthopedic surgeon last Monday (5/9) for x-rays and checkup.  I'm no expert, but the bone still looked very broken to me (I should have taken a photo).  With a fracture like his and his age, the surgeon had to "reduce" the bone length by about 1cm because it is going to grow faster than the other bone with all of the blood flowing there to heal the bone.  I trust the surgeon (he's the pediatric lower-extremity expert here in the Cities), but it still looked yucky to me.

Micah's sleeping took a turn for the worse after my last post.  He was waking up about 8 times each night for a while.  Ugh.  It was difficult to know the cause, so I asked his pediatrician for a Rx for reflux.  It seems to be helping.  Micah now has most of his sleep issues before midnight and then sleeps until 5:30ish before needing some more help to get back to sleep again.  It's much better.  So maybe it was reflux after all.  Or maybe he is finally getting used to not rolling over at night.

My dad was here visiting this past weekend and we had a nice time.  But to go on an outing as a family, we had to take two cars because Micah takes up so much room in the car.  We have him laid out in the second row of the minivan.  He has a harness that goes around him (with seven adjustments) and we run two seatbelts through that.  He has a pillow under his head and one under his legs.  He's fallen asleep there a few times, as evidenced below.

We have very much appreciated the love and support we are receiving from family and friends.  We sadly had to say goodbye (just for the summer!) to our wonderful babysitter/PCA last Friday.  We have two other PCA's for the summer, one of whom started today.  He's great!  I hope this hasn't been too crazy for him!  He'll be working with us for 3 weeks.  After that, we have a recently-minted master's in SLP who will be spending the summer working with Micah.  Yay!

Micah is continuing to go to therapy (except PT, but more on that in a minute).  Here's a pic of him with one of his SLP's, Lindsay.

Micah is going to speech/feeding twice a week and OT once a week.  We had dropped PT.  But... at Micah's last speech session, his therapists asked me how long he had been biting his arms and hands.  Um... I don't know.  It's new, I think.  The day before, I had seen what I thought was a red spotty rash on Micah's arms and wrote it off to heat rash (yeah, right, I live in MN, but it was 86 degrees one day... nevermind it was 40 a couple of days later).  Anyway, they feel that Micah is providing himself with sensory stimulation since he's missing out on all of his mobility.  I am so sad about that.  My child is biting himself.  Any thoughts?  We're adding PT back to give him some more stimulation.  And hopefully by having a PCA here almost all day, he will be too occuppied to bite anymore.

But just to show that he's not horribly depressed or something, here's a pic of Micah with his cheese face:

Oh, I forgot to mention... Micah's cast will come off on June 8th.  He will be in a leg immobilizer brace for a few weeks.  He will be able to bear weight and bend at the waist.  But it will be a few weeks before he's allowed to bend that leg.  Maybe it will be better that way because he will HAVE to walk because he won't be able to crawl.

On a separate note... say something like this happened in your family.  And maybe prior to this happening, your family was considering a decision on a separate topic.  Would you view Micah's injury as a reason NOT to proceed with that decision because it was a sign from God that your life is a bit too crazy right now?  Or would you view Micah's injury as confirmation that you were headed in the right direction because the "opposition" (devil) didn't want you to make that decision?  Please discuss. :-)

Mother's Day card

Lavender Blossoms Mother's Day 5x7 folded card

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(I got $10 from Shutterfly for posting this here.)

One week in the cast update

One week down, five(?) to go.  Micah is a rock star (most of the time).  The first couple of days, we heard him say "all done" on many occasions (as in, "okay, this has been an interesting experiment, but you can give me my legs back now").  The first night at home, he slept fairly well.  But it's gone down hill since then.  He's not in pain.  But to his credit, if I tried to roll over during the night and felt like someone had put lead weights on my hips and legs, I'd get pretty ticked off too.  I might even scream out in sheer anger (Micah's modus operandi).  For a few nights, those screams occurred hourly.  Last night we had about five scream sessions.


I'm hoping that he gets more used to sleeping on his back as the days go on, or these are going to be some rough weeks.  We bought a toddler bed and set it up in the downstairs office so that he wouldn't wake up his brothers every time he tried to move.  The downside of that is that we cannot work to maintain any semblance of order in the first floor after he goes to sleep (small noises wake him up).  So, if you happen to drop by and visit, you might think you've entered a war zone.


Since Micah's gross motor skills have hit a major roadblock, we've decided to engage more fine motor activities.



Mark took the boys to the indoorr park on Saturday.  Micah kept asking to get out of the stroller.  So Mark obliged, and this is what happened.




Way to go, Micah.  You are one determined little dude!

I'm having a difficult time adding photos to this post, for some reason, so I'm going to put them in a separate post.