Alli was super concerned about people touching her stitches and changing the dressing was quite the project :( so when it came time to take out the stitches we were a little creative. I would guess this makes anyone in the medical field super annoyed, but I am sure my freaking out daughter would be even more annoying??? Anyway either way it seemed to work out the best for her/us. We took the stitches out ourselves or rather the "Stitches Fairy" took the stitches out while Alli was sleeping and she left her cookies! Alli's stitches had dried out and were loose and her cut looked like it had healed up nicely so while she was sleeping we (Ryan while I held her finger) just clipped and pulled on the thread. It was so simple! Her finger has continued to heal and looks great now! Just a nice hook shaped scar :).
The week after her stitches were put in Spanish Fork had a "Wild West Days" random celebration. We took Alli and walked around the displays and watched sheepherding and Pig Racing-which was hilarious along with the swimming piglet. Then that night we went to a Wild West Show. Alli loved it because she loves watching horses. I loved watching group I used to dance with clog and they were amazing! it made me miss it, but also be glad that I got to do it when I was younger. It was slow at times when they were trying to be serious with different historical figures, but overall it was pretty fun. In the Native American village they had face painting so almost our whole group got a little design-I unsuccessfully tried to get my older brother to join the fun :)
The next week we were fortunate enough to have my brother's wife Annie and their two little girls come visit! Alli loved playing with Julia and Audrey and I loved getting to hang out with Annie for a little bit! We did a little splash pad visit, played play-dough and introduced Julia to the Xbox kinect. She was quite the pro in no time! Alli regularly tells me she wants to show them things or asks about them. They are such adorable little girls!!! We wish we could see them (and their parents) more, but it was a great to see them!
The whole stitches story: I was in teaching 2 piano lessons and these particular students live 20 minutes away so their parents just drop both off and Alli loves playing with with so while one has their lesson she plays with the other. They were outside playing and Ryan was doing some yard work about 20 feet away. All of a sudden he comes carrying her inside and she is crying pretty hard and after the teeth incidents we had recently had I thought she had bumped her tooth again. He said it was her finger and I took one look and could tell it was bad and needed stitches. She had been playing and jumped off our neighbors retaining wall- 1 1/2 or 2 feet high- and grabbed onto our other neighbor's decorative windwill, but when she grabbed the rounded edges of the windmill the pressure was enough so her finger went down between the two corner pieces coming together and it cut it open and got stuck. So she is standing on the ground, but her finger is stuck in and she is obviously crying. Ryan ran over and had to pull the braces apart a little so he could slide her finger out :(. I still am so surprised that her finger even got cut because the edges are seriously not sharp and almost rounded! So Ryan brings her in, I look at it, he asked where we needed to take her and her pediatrician has Saturday hours so we called and took her there after dropping Ilene off. I thought it would be fairly simple, just a few stitches no big deal. Well when the pediatrician came in and looked at it he could see how deep it was and was concerned about possible tendon and ligament damage and sent us over the the hospital to have an ER doc and possibly a hand specialist stitch it up in case she needed surgery. So off we go. We get checked in and the ER doctor takes a peek and decides that he for sure needs to sedate her (which Ryan and I were totally fine with, at this point we had no desire to hold her down while they try stitching and checking for damage inside her finger to see what all needs to be done) so he can really check the ligament for any damage. So the lovely part of it all is that all she remembers about getting stitches is the shot in her leg and then waking up :). They put a finger block in to numb her finger and all the chest monitors and oxygen monitors on, cleaned everything out and stitched her up. They had to give her some extra ketamine as they started so it took a while for her to come out. Her arm kept kind of flopping so I held it where it needed to be and we kept Ryan sitting down-he is a little on the faint side :). It was sickly interesting to see how everything inside her finger was, but luckily the ligament was still intact. So we could see it, but the cut had just gone all the way through the finger pad. She got 9 stitches and almost got a 10th, but the bleeding in that spot stopped as he got everything ready. *Edit-her finger has healed nicely and she just has a thin scar where the cut was and luckily no more tooth damage AND the tooth is still healed-no abscesses and dead tissue fortunately! I was worried because the first dentist didn't know if the re-placement would "take" and the second dentist was even more convinced that in the next few months we would be pulling it. I am once again grateful for the priesthood and that we have the blessing of having it on the earth today. I know it is because of the blessing(s) she received that her tooth has healed because she was promised it would heal and then continue healing (after the second incident). So that made for quite the busy June! To finish up June I went to Girls' Camp just during the day each day. I would drive up-Ilene went with me each day-and run the crafts and then come down each evening. It was a lot of fun and I am grateful I got to be involved with it!
