I'll remember April and smile (and cry a little bit)

It's storytime!!

Once upon a time there was an impish little girl with piggie tails and chipmunk teeth who went with her brother and her mom to a land far, far away, called "Idaho." She was going to visit her grandfather and her grandmother, called "Baca" because of her magical ability to not mind a nickname that means "cow" in Spanish.

This little girl, called "Nia" by people who preferred to not attempt a pronunciation of her full given name, was busy tripping over her feet and falling down the stairs one day at Baca's house, when her mother conspired with her aunt (called "Jo") to take all the kids and cousins to a wonderful place called "Wahooz," because of the way kids shout for joy when they see the dazzling arcade games and bumper cars, and then find out their play will be restricted to the gated indoor playground.

Quickly over the disappointment of not being allowed to spend money on a mechanical snowboard, however, Nia's cousins threw themselves into the business of climbing, sliding and jumping on the multi-level play area, called "Kiddie Cove" because:
Kids can jump, swing, play, climb and slide in our giant, two-story soft play area. Kiddie Cove is an interactive adventure that includes a 16-foot slide, zipline, magic carpet, disc swing, spiral web climb, three web ramps, rodeo rider room, and more!

As an entirely uncoordinated 19-month old, Nia was perfectly at home in Kiddie Cove, as you can imagine. Her mom, lulled into a sense of security by the words "SOFT PLAY AREA" and lack of any warning about toddlers in the play area, settled down to chat with Aunt Jo and generally ignore her children. Within minutes, Nia had worked her way up and up into a dizzying tangle of the "spiral web climb" and "web ramps." As her mom looked up to check her progress towards the zip line, secretly thrilled at the thought of her toddler on a zip line ("what an accomplishment!") she saw Nia fall headfirst through a hole in the middle of one webbed platform, to the platform beneath, about 2 feet down.

Nia started crying. From her view on the ground, her mom tried to soothe her. "Keep going, honey! You're almost to the slide!" The crying escalated, and soon Nia was on the verge of hysterical; so her mom made the agonizing decision go ahead and take a few moments to remove her shoes, before scrambling up like a spider monkey in her own "interactive adventure." Crouching between webbed platforms, Nia's tried to calm her down. She held, cajoled and tried to distract Nia, but the normally resilient girl would not stop crying. She decided Nia just needed to move on with her life, probably by going down the 20-foot slide. She plopped the little girl down and gave her a push, which successfully sent Nia screaming down the slide, her screams increasing in volume as she reached the bottom. Following quickly after, Nia's mom was starting to lose patience. She took Nia for a walk around the arcade, which was called "The Family Fun Zone," because isn't it FUN to haul a screaming toddler around in a very public place?

Minutes ticked by, and Nia continued to whimper, moan, cry and refuse to be consoled. Her mom bought her M&Ms. The crying continued between bites (though she managed to choke them all down.) Ever so slowly, a thought started to make its way through this mom's brain, towards the front part, or whichever part she uses: "Maybe she...hurt herself when she fell." A perfunctory assessment indicted no obvious signs of trauma, nor did Nia cry out when poked in any one area. At the very least, however, her mom thought she should administer some children's Motrin, so they headed home to Baca's house. A phone call with Baca ensued, wherein Baca seemed suspiciously alarmed, enough to send Nia and her mom to the emergency room of the regional medical center.

Finally beginning to be alarmed herself, Nia's mom dove headfirst into wild, irrational speculation about what physical trauma she might have sustained, arriving ultimately at TOTAL PARALYSIS. By the time a nurse came do an exam, Nia's mom was so overwrought with foreboding, she almost sighed in relief when the nurse discovered the swelling in Nia's arm, which indicted a severe sprain or break. Phew! Just a broken arm!

But then came the X-rays, which quickly rose to the top of the charts as quite possibly the worst hour EVER for everyone involved: Nia, her mom, or the X-Ray tech who could not stop apologizing profusely for the pain being inflicted on a helpless toddler. The X-rays confirmed that Nia had broken her left humorous, just above the elbow, (insert "humorous" joke here.) A temporary cast was put on, with instructions to for Nia to see a Pediatric Orthopedic specialist upon returning home from the ill-fated trip to the land of Idaho.

Back home, there was more cause for shouting "Wahoo." The very nice orthopedic specialist stopped moving his bags of money around long enough to determine that Nia would need surgery to place three pins in her broken bone, which for obvious reasons was exciting to her parents, who were looking for a way to spend several hundred dollars in the medical sector to help boost the economy. The surgery was scheduled and Nia's mom only lost about nine hours of sleep worrying about the complications of surgery on a 19-month old baby, but the whole affair went off without a hitch, not counting a three-hour delay of pushing Nia around in the Radio Flyer to help her sleep. Ultimately, the most important result was photo graphic evidence of how cute a diaper bum looks in a hospital robe.

After the surgery, Nia received a permanent cast, which she quickly adapted to. Within hours she was tying her shoes and playing "fur elise" one-handed. After four weeks it was time for the cast to come off, and there was significantly less crying when she had x-rays to show how nicely her arm had healed. Most of the crying occurred when the nice orthopedic surgeon dared to lean in a little and look Nia in the eye, breezily looking at her x-ray for 3.2 seconds, then assuring her mom that everything was great on his way out the door. Nia felt her personal space had been invaded by doctors and their ilk too many times to greet them with anything other than suspicion, nay, even disgust. An intern helped pull the pins out of Nia's arm, then helpfully suggested that her mom wrap them and put them in her purse, for scrapbooking, of course. There they were promptly forgotten until two months later, when they came tumbling out at a very inopportune moment (into a plate of food?)

And so our story ends, with almost complete recovery for all parties directly involved: Nia, Nia's arm, Nia's parents, and Nia's parents' bank account. But like all good stories, this one has a moral, and the moral is this:

~If you're going to let your toddler climb around on a two-story glorified jungle gym, you should probably have her do the zip-line first, just in case. You'll be really bummed if you have to go to the hospital before you have a chance to do the zip line.~


ps. Sorry if this story was way longer than you wanted it to be. It felt long when I was living it, too.