You know, you probably jinx yourself when you write something along the lines of “life couldn’t possibly get any better than this.” (Not that I’m supremely superstitious or anything. I’d consider myself merely somewhat superstitious.)

Poor Jack broke his collarbone. He has been way more daredevil-ish lately, flying down the hill of our cul-de-sac on his scooter, zooming onto our driveway and then jumping off, letting the poor scooter clatter off to the side. For our typically very cautious son, this new endeavor was extremely out of character. He spent one Friday night doing this over and over, going faster and faster, until I finally had to tell him to stop because I was about to have a nervous breakdown.

Seems that’s what’s actually called “Mother’s Intuition”.

A few days later he came into the house screaming. We did the once-over and didn’t see any blood or missing teeth (a huge, huge fear of mine). We did, however, see his left arm hanging down a few inches lower than the right, and once we had his shirt off, we could see the big divot in his collarbone. Eww.

So off to Childrens’ Heathcare we went. CHOA is amazing. They fast-tracked us and within an hour, we had a picture showing us this:

Within 2 hours, we were back at home. Diagnosis? Broken collarbone, 6-8 weeks in a sling with another 4-6 weeks recovery after that.

Fall baseball season? Gone.

Riding a bike or scooter? Gone, until Halloween or later.

Tying shoes? Impossible.

Sitting up in bed by oneself? We’re getting there.

…that would be Tucker in the middle, not just a random set of arms

The neighbors came over the next day and decided to sign Jack’s “cast”. Since you can’t actually put a cast on a broken collarbone, poor Jack has this vulnerable looking get-up of a sling and an Ace bandage that holds his arm against his chest and prevents movement (in theory, at least). He came in and asked me if the neighbors could decorate his arm, after the fact. This was the first time I’d seen him do anything close to smile in over 24 hours.

Of course, school pictures were taken the very next day.

Tucker and Theo have been terrific at staying calm around Jack–at least for the first week. And all 3 boys have really gotten good at cooperation. Tucker has to help Jack unbuckle his seatbelt in the car, for instance. And, of course, all the really good iPad games need at least 2 good hands.

Jack is on the mend. He is one tough cookie. We are grateful for the wonderful folks at CHOA.

Completely gratuitous video:  we recently swapped out our pathetic, lousy, worthless phones for new ones that hopefully will hold a charge longer than 4 minutes. We’ve been putting off this switch for at least a year now, mostly because we didn’t want to lose our old answering machine message.

Here’s Jack, at about 18 months old (no lie), on our old machine (before unplugging the old dinosaur of an answering machine, I played the message 3 times while recording it with my iPhone to make sure we’d have it forever. Told you I was sentimental.):

And finally, it’s almost the middle of September! Almost time to start dragging out the gruesome! Here’s Theo’s addition to our Halloween decor, picked out yesterday afternoon while we killed an hour between carpools:

Oh, yes. That is indeed a box of fingers.

From Paper Affair on Northside in Atlanta.

(You’re welcome.)