I’ve skipped way too much on here.

I skipped New Year’s Eve where we celebrated Dotsey family Christmas at my sister’s house in Gastonia.

I skipped Fawkes and Phoenix’s fourth birthday, which we celebrated with the Romeros, Erin and Daniel, and Nonnie at Medieval Times.

I skipped Milly being in her school’s production of Beauty and the Beast, which premiered tonight. I’m taking Fawkes and Phoenix on Thursday.

I skipped how I’ve been learning French on Duolingo and am about 160 days in.

I skipped Tristen transitioning to working from home and setting up a nice little home office in our bedroom.

I’m pretty sure I skipped the entirety of Tristen’s surrogacy, in which we gained a new family by helping another family grow theirs. She was going into labor Saturday morning a week and a half ago and delivered a beautiful baby named Katherine to our new family, Carlos and Joe.

I skipped my mom coming to help in the aftermath.

I skipped anything about Coach K’s final season at Duke, which was a pretty good success since they reached the Final Four, but was also marred by losing two out of three games to UNC, one of them being his last game in Cameron Indoor Stadium and another being in said Final Four game, that being the first time the rivals had met in the NCAA Tournament.

I skipped so many things the boys have started doing, like their burgeoning imaginations and ability to write and draw and play unattended for a while. (That last one is mainly just Fawkes and Phoenix.)

But I probably shouldn’t skip Griffin’s broken leg.

To that end, Griffin broke his leg today. He’s got a spiral fracture in his right tibia, a little over halfway down.

How did he break his leg, you ask? I’m not even really sure. Here’s the story.

We got a call from the preschool around 10:30 with news that Griffin had fallen on the playground. He was crying a lot and wouldn’t put any pressure on his right leg. One of the teachers saw him when he fell. There was nobody around him so he wasn’t pushed or anything. He didn’t fall off of anything. He just kind of tripped. My guess is that his foot was planted and he just twisted it wrong or something.

We will be asking (and have been asked) if he has brittle bones or something, especially considering that he broke his clavicle  about a year and a half ago. I don’t think he does though, because he plays pretty rough sometimes and he more than the other boys is pretty impressive in how he’ll jump off of things.

At least his class did their Easter egg hunt before that.

Anyway, Tristen and I had a meeting scheduled with Fawkes and Phoenix’s teachers (nothing bad at all, just to discuss them and whatnot), so the two of them were already going to be able to stay for the extra lunchtime session, so we had packed their lunches and weren’t planning on picking them up until later anyway, which turned out to be a good thing.

So we picked Griffin up with me holding him in the backseat and him holding him leg the whole time. While in the van, Laura, Tristen’s mom, was able to schedule us an appointment with a Medac. When we got there though, we were told the x-ray machine was down so we went to one a little further south at Monkey Junction. They x-rayed him and gave the prognosis that you already read.

I have to mention that getting the x-rays, that was heart-wrenching. I carried him to the room (keep in mind that Tristen isn’t supposed to carry anything over ten pounds yet) and they needed to get his leg as straight as he could get it. Even though it didn’t get very straight, it was excruciating for him and Tristen heard him back in the examining room and started crying. They took a second one with him on his side, which was a lot easier on him.

They didn’t have anything to make a splint or anything like that, so we were told to go to an ortho or to the emergency room. According to some people at the Medac who had worked at the orthopedic clinic, they can’t give out much for pain.

So from there we went back to get Fawkes and Phoenix. Fawkes was crying, but I think it was just because being there for lunch and us not being there like we were supposed to be was just so out of sync for him. The plan was for us to meet Laura at the hospital where she’d stay with me and help out while Tristen would take the twins to Torrie’s. The reason we split it up like that is because, as I mentioned, Tristen can’t carry Griffin right now, but I had to carry him in both arms for the sake of his leg, but in doing so I wouldn’t be able to very easily do anything else. Like, anything. Handing out insurance cards, using the phone, entertaining the kids… anything. On top of that, she needed to pump at some point.

So Laura, Griffin, and I hung out at the hospital for a while. It really didn’t take too long for us to be called back and the people were super friendly. Griffin was out of sorts, of course. He’d nodded off a few times at the Medac and in the van, but of course he’d wake up screaming in pain when his hand would skip from holding his leg. As it was, he was very sensitive to everything going on and wouldn’t even willingly let the nurses put monitors on his toes or fingers.

At one point a doctor came in and said they wanted to put an IV in him so they could ease the pain and take another x-ray. Laura and I were against that. The reason they didn’t want to give him an oral medicine was in case an operation was needed, and they said they wanted to get a better view of the bone. We sent the doctor to talk to the ortho before doing any such thing and when he came back he said they were just going to give him some cherry-flavored liquid oxy and give him a splint.

After watching a bit of Spongebob and getting his drugs, and then watching the nurses wrap my and Laura’s arms in bandages, he was mostly okay with them wrapping his leg after a bit and putting a splint on it. The splint definitely helped because he was a lot less sensitive to any movements or bumps.

Laura took us home (with a pitstop at McDonald’s as I literally had eaten nothing but two cashew clusters in the morning and a couple bites of turkey jerky Laura gave me in her car) and Tristen pulled up with the twins right as I was carrying Griffin into the house. I parked him on the couch, where he stayed until about 9:00.

We ended up having to cut Griffin’s shorts off, which I feel a bit salty about. I wish someone had thought to point out the fact that there was no way we were getting them off after the splint was on. They were nice shorts and with three boys all about the same size, we seem to run out of pants really quick.

He’s sleeping in my spot in the bed tonight. We’ll see how things go as when he’ll be sleeping upstairs again. For now we want to make sure he’s nearby and easy to get to.

There are a lot of questions for us going forward. Things like: How do we put pants on him when we need to take him out? When does he go back to school? When will he be able to get around by himself? Does he need a baby-sized walker or something? How long will it take him to get back to walking once the cast is off? And so on.

Tristen let me know a few minutes ago that she canceled reservations she’d made for us to go to Asheville from Monday to Wednesday next week. It sucks, and we don’t know what’s going to be going on next week, not until we talk to the doctors tomorrow, but it’s probably the smart thing to do. Still, it made me think of the scene from Up where they keep saving up money for their trip, but then keep smashing their money jar because life gets in the way of fun plans.