Burnt toast.

Saturday, there was something. It had something to do with Russell. Oh, yeah, he went to hang out with friends.

I always feel awkward around other parents. I always feel like I'm doing something wrong or I'm an atrocious excuse for a parent when I'm around other parents because it seems like other parents are just so much more cool than me. I kept going over all these conversations with these other kids' mom in my head Saturday night, wondering what this woman thought of me. I realize this is so insecure it's horrid, but add it to the fact that I was feeling pretty guilty about Russell and you kind of understand.

At Bear's friends' house, they were riding bikes. He was showing off that he didn't need training wheels, went too fast, stopped paying attention and then did this weird steering wiggle thing and took a bad crash. He landed mostly on his elbow and sideways, so the bike landed on his arm. He screamed bloody murder and was as far as I could tell, just scratched up a little. I had him bend and extend his arm, which he could do just fine.

He seemed to calm down and when I walked away to go talk to the other mom about it, he started to do this loud fake cry thing and then he sat down for a few minutes and then was running around with the other kids all over again.

Now, you have to understand, that Russell falls a lot and unlike other kids who fall, dust themselves off and get up and smile at you, Russell lays there wallowing in the dirt like a pig, forcing tears out of his eyes like the biggest drama king you ever saw. I get tired of this shit every time he takes a spill. We've tried pandering to it. We've tried ignoring it and nothing seems to help. The problem is that he does this shit in school over stupid stuff and he will take a slight bump from someone and turn it into,"You PUSHED me!" and purposely fall and then scream like a wounded rhino.

As a result, he's cried wolf so many times, that it's hard to take him seriously about any of it.

Saturday, though, after he wouldn't stop doing the fake yelling thing, I went back and saw a huge amount of scraping, that I'd originally missed, so I cleaned him up and bandaged up his scrapes and that seemed to be that. He complained about it stinging throughout the day, and I kept telling him that scrapes will do that. Finally, he was doing this weird thing of favoring it and then claimed he couldn't straighten it.

I knew in my heart of hearts that this was a Russell Drama King snowjob, but I had to follow it out, just in case I was wrong.

I called the pediatrician. They had us do a few things and now, suddenly, he couldn't straighten it as I'm on the phone and I did notice a little swelling and bruising, but I would have expected that, so we had to take him to the emergency room.

As we're driving over there, we told Bear that if his arm was broken, because at this point, he was hamming it up a lot, that he wouldn't be able to go to Waterworld with his friend, Christian, or be able to use his scooter. When we got out of the car in the hospital parking lot, he started showing us how perfectly well his arm felt, how he could fully extend and flex it, and telling us how it really didn't hurt that much.

Pfft. If I'm in the hospital parking lot, he's getting x-rays. He ended up having just a bad bruise(which we already knew-- for that bit of info, I have to pay a $35 co-pay) and the doctor gave him a sling to use for a couple days. He used it all of one day and then, after being totally slingless on Monday, and playing all kinds of stuff with Christian, including scootering, trying to put it on for school on Tuesday (for a bit of attention). I told him if he didn't need it to play on Monday, he didn't need it at school on Tuesday. (I had visions of him telling the teacher he couldn't do classwork because his arm hurt him so) He was so bummed. I think boys like things like that for the badge of honor thang.

I feel so jaded and so lacking in compassion or something, but I knew he was milking it and it was just annoying. I had to follow it through just to make sure, but I hate it when my Jaded Self is right. That's one of those times, I really wish the phrase,"I told you so" was absent.

On Sunday, I did meet up with Jolene to buy some Partylite candles from her. We had lunch together with families in tow. I got to feeling kind of awkward because the kinds of things we have in common aren't the kinds of things you talk about in front of both of your whole families. And the most recent stuff in her life was definitely not for public discussion. Oh, and Jolene cut her hair and it was GORGEOUS! She's got thick dark hair like Mike and she did kind of a shoulder length bob and it looked great. Geesh, I did that to my hair and it could be rated as an improvement and little more.

I loved meeting her daughter, Jessica, who is about 1.25 months older than Gennybug. Jessica looks like both her parents. She has the most astounding eyes I've ever seen -- they're Betty Boop big and lavendar, and she's got this really pretty and cool hair cowlick thing. When I say cowlick, I know you're thinking, oh, some weird hair sticking up, but it's not. It's just that her hair lays a particular way, naturally. It's something Jolene has, too, and I just envy the heck out of both of them because it looks cool. My hair lays limp as a wet rag and will occasionally curl, but mostly it just continues to fall out in tufts. God forbid it should do what I want it to.

As for Tuesday...

I took Genny in for her four month check up and she weighs in at 17lbs 6 oz. and is 27 and 3/8" long.

She got her shots and she was whiny afterwards, and I assumed it was because she had to poop or something, but she didn't. I kept nursing her, but she'd barely eat and finally late in the afternoon, I realized she was hotter than 98.6°F, so I took her temp under her arm and it was 100. I called the doctor and then Mike came home. We gave her tylenol and stripped her down to get a rectal temp, so it would be more accurate and her little thighs were swollen where she'd gotten the shots. And her temp was 101.4°F. I start freaking out. We were worried about this for the first round of shots. I guess I hadn't really figured it would be a problem this time, if the first time was okay.

I sat in the tub with her and held her in tepid water. I poured water over her, splashed the water for her and she just sat there kind of wiped out. When we got out, the bath and the tylenol made her feel good enough to nurse pretty well, but that's when I found her temp was higher than 100.

This morning, her temp had gone down and according to her daycare mommy, "She's happy as can be."