Be careful what you wish for

We're halfway through the summer holidays, and it occurred to me at the weekend it's time to raise my game.  More walks, picnics, exciting days out.  I wanted to make some memories, you know the kind of stuff.

One of the boys' friends came for the day on Tuesday.  Between showers I took them to the park.  They took scooters, and climbed trees and scooted up and down and generally had fun.  I stayed a few minutes longer than I meant to (we had a dentist's appointment in the late afternoon).  Right at the end, just before we were about to leave, the biggest boy scooted down the massive ramp, then up a small ramp, and then he went down the small ramp.  The scooter did not go down the small ramp, rather it stopped dead at the top.  He hit the ground really hard, face and knee first.  It was horrible.

I scraped him up, took the others home, and headed for A&E.  The local one referred us on to the Children's Hospital because their X-ray department closes at 4.30pm.  The Children's Hospital were wonderful as ever and put him in a splint and sent him home for the night.  The next day they X-rayed him and discovered that his patella has been snapped.  So now he has a plaster cast from his ankle to his thigh.  His tooth and face were banged as well, so we struggled along to the dentist.  It will need X-raying next week when the swelling goes down (he has a look of Pamela Anderson about him at the moment.  Facially that is).

It's quite tricky levering him in and out of the car with a completely straight leg, and not at all comfortable.  He's been told to rest as well, so he's pretty much confined to the sofa.  The sad part for him is that he will have to miss his Year 6 camp in three weeks' time.  It's supposed to be the highlight of their time at primary school, a bonding trip and it's constantly referred to for the rest of the year.  I'm devastated for him.  Of course he's also out of football for 8-10 weeks.  The good news is it should heal okay.

It occurs to me that he might have escaped a broken bone if he'd been wearing knee pads.  And he would have had less damage to his mouth with a gum shield.

So there's a bit of a crimp in my plans for summer.  I'll take the littler ones out a bit, but I don't feel I can leave the biggest boy at home too much (his dad works from home, but nonetheless I don't want him without us for very long).  I know it's not a big problem in the general scheme of things, but I'm just in the adjustment period.  Changing my plans, rethinking my expectations for the end of the summer.  When I said I wanted to make some memories, this wasn't quite what I had in mind.

I managed a quick trip to the allotment today while I was in town with the littler ones.  I knew we'd missed a cucumber last time we were there.  In fact, there were seven fairly enormous ones.  I'm sure if you sat there quietly you'd actually see them growing.

On the walk to our plot, the shade was starting to creep up the site from the stream and hedge at the bottom.  The shadows are lengthening a littler earlier these days.

 

I felt a little out of love with the plot today.  It's messy and not particularly productive.  I've written a post about why I have an allotment, but it seems a bit hypocritical to publish it right now.  It won't last, of course, but I'm just not feeling it this week.  Too many giant cucumbers and weeds.  Too much of life slipping slightly out of my control.

At home things have been quiet.  A little entente cordiale broke out briefly after the accident.  The littlest boy has so much empathy for one so small.  He was so happy to see his big brother home again.  He curled up next to him and stroked his hair.  He fetched and carried and helped him get his legs onto the sofa.  He did briefly push one of the crutches out from under him earlier, but the error of his ways has been vividly explained and we are back to calm loveliness now.

Card houses are still being constructed.

There's the odd fig, and I'm eating them all myself.  I don't think anyone else would fully appreciate them.  Not like I do anyway.

Thank you for all of your kind wishes on my last post.  I'm feeling okay now, almost back to normal.  And all in all I'm really counting our blessings.  A trip to the Children's Hospital will do that to you.