Merry Christmas from Wisconsin!

I hope your Christmas was filled with peace, joy and a bit less excitement than ours. Our day started with a 5:30 alarm (because apparently AJ was afraid he wouldn't wake up Christmas morning). That woke him up, along with us because he was sleeping in our room due to his aunt, uncle and their  puppies in his room. We heard Teddy stirring, so we decided to bring him to our room for family snuggles until 6 a.m. when we'd go downstairs to check to see if Santa came. 

Teddy was so excited to come into our room so early that he somehow stepped in a basket (that isn't anywhere in the walking path) and cracked his chin on our dresser, knocking down several things with a clatter that accompanied his cries. We saw quickly that he was dripping blood, unfortunately from his chin. That's a tough area to get to stop bleeding, especially when he wouldn't let us apply pressure and barely would let us keep dabbing it after the first couple minutes. After just a few minutes he was done crying and wanted to bounce all around our sheets, rolling around with his face on the sheets. Let's just say we got to do a couple loads of blood-stained laundry. 

After a bit, it seemed to stop dripping blood, no thanks to liquid skin which only resulted in protests. A shower seemed to help stem the bleeding and at least get him clean. So we went downstairs to see what Santa brought while debating whether we needed to head to the hospital for stitches.

We had excited kids for opening presents but determined we really did need to take him in for medical treatment. Fortunately urgent care was open with a short wait posted online. (Urgent care is a much quicker process and typically way less traumatic for Teddy as he has really bad memories from the ER.) We had family at our house to hang out with AJ, so we took Teddy in for a Christmas visit to the hospital.

This was before the trauma of treatment started.

The doctor and nurse realized pretty quickly that it did indeed need stitches ... and that applying a bandage with numbing cream wasn't going to work. That sent Teddy into hysterics because he really does not like bandages on him, and I'm sure it felt funny to have it being numbed. So instead they rounded up probably all the doctors and nurses working at 7 a.m. Christmas morning to have a team of 4 people to assist. 

We did a blanket wrap, literally restraining his arms and legs with a blanket and then applying pressure. It took 5 of us holding him while the unlucky doctor put in 4 stitches into a hysterical Teddy. There are few things worse than having your child hysterical (or lifeless after seizures) and being unable to do anything to make it better. 

However, as soon as the stiches were done, Teddy bounced back quickly, smiling as we left the hospital and excited by the time we got home to ring the doorbell and see everyone inside. 

Once we got past that excitement, we had a splendid Christmas. The highlight was seeing my 99-year-old grandfather and making memories with him and the boys. The kids loved their presents, and we even managed a Christmas morning run for some of us. 

Unseasonably warm weather allowed Teddy to join us for our Christmas run. 

We're not too excited we get to start the New Year at urgent care because that's when Teddy's stitches need to come out, but that should be less traumatic for all of us.