Thank you, Internet. Now can I have a nap?

If any good has come from our exciting new lives as parents of a child in a cast, it is that I've made so many new friends (and reconnected with so many old ones) in the last two days. I've gotten lots of calls and emails and a few comments reassuring me there will be no lasting mental scars for any of us and, more importantly, that I'm not alone. Apparently not realizing your child has a broken bone OR realizing it but just not having time to deal with it until after dinner is a part of parenting, and I'm getting very zen about the whole thing. I know feeling guilty is useless, but I feel my heart break a little every time I look at her or imagine breaking a bone and not being able to tell anyone--look, it really hurts. I would so much rather have broken my own bone!

Then, when I've had my maternal moment, I can't help but laugh at the stories I will one day tell about the whole ordeal, including last night when I watched her try to pick up a pretzel with the stubs of fingers that poke out of her cast. It was frustrating, but she wouldn't give up and even grunted a little for good measure. When she finally grabbed hold of it and began to lift it to her mouth (her other hand was occupied with her sippy cup), the 90 degree angle of her cast made it impossible for it to get it to her lips, and instead of readjusting she craned her head left, left, left even more, trying to find a way for finger and lips to meet. It was sad. But also kind of funny.

So thank you all for your kind words and your advice. Now can you do something about our shitty sleeping? We were right in the middle of a pretty smooth transition to her own room, her own bed, and now no one's sleeping well AT ALL. Clementine can't get comfortable, which means she's wide awake and needing lots of comfort. We're committed to the bed and refuse to backslide, which means we aren't just doing what's easiest and hauling her in bed with us. What that means is that one of us is in there with her most of the night (last night it was me and it was ALL night), trying to help her get comfortable and avoiding the giant clunk of cast into our foreheads every time she moves around. Let me tell you, the damn thing isn't smooth--I have scratch marks all over my face, which isn't nearly as bad as the huge bags under my eyes from getting only about two hours of sleep. It's like having a newborn, and I think I can only take another night of it before I try to figure out a new plan. Like sedation. Or soundproofing.

I am still managing to get some pictures, though my camera isn't fixed. I have been dragging home a camera from work that has a broken lens, but it still works with the zoom lens which is why I have such odd close-up perspective on all the shots. It may look like I'm right up in her face, but I'm actually a half a room away calling "Clementine, Clementine!" like a moron. From far away it's hard to see she even HAS a cast:

But she has a great sense of humor about it. She would forget her arm was there at all for a while, but then she'd try to use it only to find it was stuck under the table. Nevertheless, she laughs AND is still very excited to me five:

I can't get the monkey hat off her sometimes. She is obsessed with all things monkey.

Lest you think she's gettin a free ride and all kinds of spoiling just because she's hurt and we feel guilty, she's still doing her chores. Again, it's a tight shot so you really can't see how cute it is, but every night we tell her to "do her laundry" and she scours the hallway, picking up anything in her path and takes it, piece by piece, to the laundry chute to throw it down. It's harder now with one hand, but she's not slacking:

I can't put any of her bath shots with my ingenious saran wrap water shield up here because they all show her parts and I'm a little leery of bath pictures on the internet after hearing some bizarre Flickr stories, but here is one of my favorite new pictures of darling C and her dad. She almost never gets out of the bath happy, but I think now that the cast makes baths so miserable we have more of this to look forward to: