The monkey bars won!

On Friday my phone rang, the dreaded call from the nurses office at school. 

Our third day into kindergarten and it was 5-year-old vs monkey bars. The monkey bars won. 

We took her as swiftly as we could to the ER and found out that she had broken her elbow and would require surgery and two pins, which earned her an overnight at the hospital! If this wasn't bad enough, the poor kid turned six two days later, and we had to cancel her party with her friends for the following day! 

There is NOTHING worse than seeing your child in any sort of pain, but to have her undergo such a dramatic injury, I wish I could have traded with her. As a parent we try our best to keep our kids safe, but we cannot protect them all of the time. 

She handled the situation so wonderfully. She was far braver than I ever would have been. In fact, she didn't shed a single tear once we left school. Even after hearing the news about her party, receiving several X-rays, exams and an IV. Wow! 

So while this wasn't exactly how I had planned on kicking off the new school year, one very positive thing has come from this. When something bad strikes, we realized how blessed we are to have the people we do around us. The outpouring of support and love certainly helped this momma feel better, but also helped ease our daughter's pain too. 

There is no way to prepare for something like this, but I will say that we felt like we were in great hands with all of the professionals at Gundersen Health System. The nurses even threw her a birthday party in the hospital, complete with a wrapped gift and a cupcake with a candle! 

So now that she is rockin' her hot pink and purple cast, we are back into the swing of things at school. She is handling the cast and change of doing things left-handed so wonderfully. Although we didn't begin exactly as planned, our school year is now well under way and moving forward nicely. 

 We are just hoping the only monkeys we encounter from now on are at the zoo.