Lincoln Park, Emergently

Stupid Mommy Trick: yanking your child up by the arm to keep him/her from falling or running away. When the child is around the age of two, this is nearly sure to cause nursemaid's elbow. I have managed to cause this ailment in both of my older children. I did it to The Boy when he was around 20 months of age, on the day that I learned that I was pregnant with The Girl. We drove to Children's Memorial Hospital's ER; 45 minutes and $75 later, he was fine. He managed to pop it out twice in the following year, but having watched the simple maneuver made by the ER docs, I knew what to do: dose him with ibuprofen, offer him a lollipop while holding the good arm and pop it back into place.

So I was surprised to learn that nursemaid's elbow was the diagnosis given by the docs at Children's this afternoon when I took The Girl in after pulling her away from licking the glass at the Post Office this morning. I was nursing The Baby in the comfort of the P.O.'s air conditioning when The Girl decided that licking the glass of an empty display unit was a good idea. I asked her to stop, and then pulled her away with one hand, while using the other arm to hold and nurse The Baby. She tripped over her shoes and almost fell, and I yanked her up. Felt a pop in her wrist and then she started crying and refused to move her arm.

After dropping The Baby off at home with The Dad and conferring with The Girl's pediatrician, I took her into the emergency room. Down Fullerton in full-on Cubs/hot summer day traffic. While waiting for the traffic light to turn green at Racine, I spied a new barbershop concept for men: SportsClips. It appears to be modeled on the idea spawned by Snippets, KidSnips, Cookie Cutters and the like: that young men, like children, do not like having their hair cut and sitting in front of a TV while the service is performed will make it more palatable.

At the ER, she screamed bloody murder. The nurse forced ibuprofen down her and the diagnosis from the docs came quickly. Popping the elbow back in proved a bit more difficult. They tried it twice before it took. The nurses and pediatricians were all very nice, and assured me that I could not have broken my child's wrist simply from pulling her up.

When The Girl was pronounced fine and free to go, we were both starving. The Boy had gone with The Dad to the park and McDonald's and in our brief stop at home, The Girl had seen his Happy Meal toy. So we walked up Lincoln Avenue to the DePaul McDonald's for a late lunch. It started to pour while we were there, so we sat at McD's for about 45 minutes in sum. We stopped briefly at The White Elephant, the Children's Memorial resale shop, on the way back to the garage; I had never been and wanted to check it out. In fact, I donated our dining room table and chairs to the store a few months ago. It was not in the store, but lots of other treasures were, including some very nice designer clothes for women. I will have to go back again.