Brace Face and Metal Mouth come for a two year visit

So it would seem that April is the month of the Parrish kids getting braces.  Well, at least two of them.  Emma has needed them for about three years now, but still had a few baby teeth that wouldn't budge.  Reece on the other hand, lost all his baby teeth early, and was ready by the end of 5th grade.

Dad wanted to pose with Reece before he went in for the big appointment.  Pre-braces.  When Dr. Fishbein said, yep, Reece could get them right then and there, we decided, why wait?

Emma had her appointment to pull her last baby tooth that afternoon with Dr. Bonin our dentist.  The two of them always fight over who can sit in the front seat of the car. So, when I picked up Emma from school and she saw Reece was already in the front seat, she opened the door and said, " Out Reece!  I'm having a tooth pulled today."  He closed the door on her and rolled down the window and said, " I got braces this morning, so there!"  End of discussion, his misery trumped hers, so he got the front seat.

Emma got her braces the following week and if you wear your Fishbein " Fish" shirt every time you have an appointment you get extra points which can be cashed in at the end of treatment for gift cards or cash. Both of them were told about two years was how long the braces would be on.  That seems like a long road to go, when you have a sore mouth and now can't eat gum, popcorn or caramel apples.

With every "First" comes a "Last"

When we started NB Cook Elementary we knew going in it was a magnet school for the arts.  The principal explained they had a drama teacher, Mrs. Odom, who actually worked with Julie Andrews on Mary Poppins.  Each year the children would be involved with two productions, a grade level production and a seasonal play.  

I knew these productions would be right up Emma's alley, but Reece was my shy, quiet lad.  Under the tutorage of Dr. Elliott the music teacher, who plays the piano and teaches the class the song they will sing in the play, and Mrs. Hayes the dance teacher, who guides the class to learn the dance they will perform, Reece over the years grew to enjoy the performances. 

Reece's first production was the seasonal fall production, where he was a vine and had to sing a song called, Swing Swing.

It's amazing to look back now 6 years later, and see the same faces standing next to Reece, only instead of pudgy, toddler faces, they are turning into young teen faces.  

The shy, little guy who barely opened his mouth to whisper out the lines and songs, has grown into a confident, young man, who even though he doesn't look forward to the productions, seems to have accepted that they exist and says his lines loudly and with spunk.

His last play at NB Cook was his 5th grade production in March, the Irish Heritage Play.

His class, Mrs. Coley's, represented the railway workers, and early 1800 towns people.  His last lines were, " the Transcontinental railroad connected east to west."  and his very last line ever spoken in a play at NB Cook was, " Work began in 1863."

Here is Reece with his best friends he made at Cook.  Six boys, Jake, Fin, Teddy, Tucker and Ira that call themselves " The Hex." Because, there were six of them.  All these little Irish lads will be parting ways at the end of this year, after being together since Kinder.  Seems that when the firsts happen, you are never quite ready for the lasts to happen.

Trampolines are as dangerous as everyone says

 It all started so innocently enough.  A backyard game of Badminton that Emma got for her birthday the day before.  We had driven up to Virginia to do a two week physical therapy session for Emma's Scoliosis to try and prevent her from having spinal fusion surgery.  Staying with Grandma was a good choice since she has a big backyard with a trampoline, a basement full of scary old puppets and a park with a creek right down the road.  Muffet could come with us, and everyone had their own bed.  June 9th, 2015, a fun game of Badminton after dinner, turned to silliness on the trampoline.  And about 20 minutes after this picture was taken, Adeline broke her right arm above the elbow.

 We spent most of the night in urgent care in McLean, only to be told, they couldn't fix this kind of break on a child and that we needed to go to Inova hospital of Fairfax.  After hours of waiting, and X-rays, and waiting in beds and getting medicine, they finally came in to torture Adeline and set her break.  It was a woman named Kat, who actually was doing it, because I told Adeline oh her name is Kat and I bet she'll be so nice and gentle with you.  These were all lies and pipe dreams, it hurt!  The screams are probably still echoing off the hallways of the pediatric ER to this day.

 The days that followed, involved laying in bed with her arm propped up, lots of pain medication and a healthy dose of her cousins and Washington D.C.  Aunt Cathy would drop by with candy and a giant butterfly balloon to cheer up her littlest niece.  The break was clean through the upper humerus bone right above the elbow.  Changing clothes became a challenge and we decided anything that could be pulled up from your feet, instead of over your head, was what we were wearing for the rest of the summer.

 When we got home a week later and went to get our hard cast from Nemours children's hospital.  The sweet lady up there told Adeline that the latest trend all the little girls were going with was the Frozen Elsa cast.  Light blue with sparkle glitter all over the outside.  There was a giant whiteboard in the cast room broken up into boxes.  Each box had the heading of a common way to break your arm or leg, ex: bike, monkey bars, pets.  Adeline was able to add her dash mark for the month of June to the Trampoline box.

The rest of the summer was spent finding creative ways to still go to the beach and pool, without getting out cast wet. We cooked pierogis with mom, while the other kids were in the pool.  But, when our good friend from Louisiana came for a weekend, we used a plastic dish glove to cover the cast and just be an 8 year old kid playing with her oldest friend.

Lets hope this will be the only blog post that involves a broken bone until I stop blogging.