Pumpkin Festival

Yesterday I managed to finish all of our Halloween costumes and we decided to celebrate by showing them off at the Heber Valley Railroad Pumpkin Festival.  The festival included activities like picking your own pumpkin, pumpkin decorating, face painting, a haunted train car, and a 40-minute train ride.

We made the trek to Heber and had a blast watching baby run around like crazy (like she always does when she is someplace new).  We picked out our pumpkins but opted to take them home to carve instead of painting them there.  We wandered through the not-so-scary haunted train car. And I enjoyed having people tell us how cute our costumes were (I put A LOT of work into them, so it was nice to have my hard work recognized).  One couple even asked to take our picture for themselves.

Unfortunately, while we were waiting for the train, baby would not sit still, fell down a couple times, and eventually started crying/whimpering and couldn't be soothed.  We thought she was tired because she didn't get her second nap in for the day.  Then we thought she was hungry.  Then we took her costume off in case that was what was bothering her.  Nothing seemed to help.  She didn't really want to be held, but she cried when she walked around too.  We were tempted to see if we could get a refund and just go home, but the train arrived at that moment so we decided to see if the train ride would help distract her.  And it did, sort of.

We loaded up onto the train and she settled in with a blanket on my lap watching Elmo on Jason's phone.  Some witches and mummies came through our car to entertain us and give out pumpkin cookies, which Leila really liked.  As we were going, I remarked that she wasn't really using her left hand much but thought that she was just content where she was at.

When the train ride was over, she started crying again as we were getting off the train.  We snapped one group picture outside the station and loaded her up in the car, at which point she really started letting loose, real tears and all.  We finally got her calmed down and distracted again, but I noticed she still wasn't using her left arm/hand at all.  Something was definitely up.

We got home and did our own evaluation of her arm and decided it was definitely hurting her as she started crying every time we moved it.  We thought it seemed worse around her wrist, but couldn't be sure.  It was helping matters that she was exhausted too.  So we gave her some Ibuprofen and put her to bed.  She fell asleep quickly and I was hopeful that maybe a good night sleep would help her feel better.  But a good night sleep was not to be had for any of us.  Right about the time the medicine was probably starting to wear off, she woke up screaming.

We soothed her, comforted her, and gave her another bottle.  I eventually got her to calm down snuggling with me in our bed while Jason made a late night trip to the store for some more medicine since we had used the last of it earlier.  When he got back we doped her up again and put her back to bed.  Total awake time for her had been about an hour and a half.

This morning she woke up in a happier mood but she still wasn't using her left arm at all.  She'd just let it hang  limply by her side.  I decided it was time to take her to a doctor.  We called the on-call pediatrician and were told that she had probably dislocated her elbow.  He said he would be in the office an hour and a half later and that we should bring her in so that he could take a look.  

She was still in a much happier mood and started using her arm a little bit more as she was moving around and playing during that next hour and a half.  By the time we got her into the doctor and he examined her, she was fine.  Didn't cry or whimper at all.  Doctor said that she most likely had popped it back into place on her own and would probably be fine now.  He did warn us that it was more likely to pop back out of place for the next 6 months so we needed to be extra careful.  He also showed us what to do to pop it back into place should it happen again.

A worrisome night for sure, but I'm grateful everything seems to have resolved itself.  She was using two hands on her bottle again before I put her down for a well-deserved nap.  And now, I may just go join her!