Castles and Super Glue

The girls and I ventured out today to East Haddam to Gillette Castle. It was built from 1914-1919 by William Gillette, an actor famous for his stage portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. It's a fascinating place, built by a somewhat eccentric bachelor. It's full of interesting features, including elaborately calculated and carved locks on each of the bedroom doors and bizarre light switches. He built the bedrooms in such a way "to make great entrances in the opportune moment". The castle was built on a huge hill overlooking the Connecticut River. It has amazing views. The self guided tour took me and the girls all of 13 minutes. It's unfortunate that they have so much of the castle rooms and floors blocked off to the public...though it leaves much to the imagination. The girls felt like princesses walking up and down the interior stone steps, though much of the interior is very "untraditionally castle-like"...meaning, its nothing like the castles on Twelve Dancing Princesses or Hogwarts. It's built in an area that was bought by Connecticut and made a State Park so it is surrounded by forest and trails. Following this particular picture, Haley took a nasty little spill coming down a path and landed her bony hip bone on a sharp Connecticut rock. I've never seen a cut like that before. I don't think that I will ever waiver on whether or not a cut around here needs stitches or not...I knew that she needed stitches. She finally calmed down enough for me to put a gauze patch over it and chilled for the ride home. We drove home, dropped Abby and Mia off with a neighbor and headed up the hill to the clinic for medical advice.
Once we got there and met Miriam, our really nice nurse in the Mickey Mouse scrubs, Haley got goofy (before the torture began, of course.) The nurse decided that we could probably get by with a good cleaning and tape or glue, instead of sending us to an ER out in town for stitches. That was a great relief to Haley, though you would have thought that the irrigation and glue were meticulously devised for her own individual torture. The girl was downright squirmy and defensive, swatting pour Miriam's hands away. We let her put on gloves to squeeze water, I put on gloves to squeeze water...we let her take pictures, gave her gum...all to no avail...she is a total 5 year old girl in the face of a medical procedure. The doctor was very patient with her and while Miriam laid on her legs and she gripped my torso in terror, he finished cleaning her out and glued her shut! This was after Miriram shared stories about her daughters dislocated knees and her son's staples in his head from skateboarding...oh, and I may have threatened her that if she wasn't calm for the doctor to clean it out we would have to amputate from the waist down...all in good humor, naturally. Good as new. I'm glad for a good excuse to tell her to take it easy for a few days...no playing on the playground, no wrestling, not even roughhousing, no bikes, no baths. She asked me every five minutes tonight if it was still glued shut. She is a good girl. This is a picture that she took of her doctor (remember, it was a sight-seeing day, we had the camera!)
Mia developed a 'come and go' mystery rash and we did an enjoyable family dinner on the patio at Panera, one of our favorite family spots. Then ended the night with scripture reading and an uncontrollable giggling fit during family prayer...the best part, I was the one praying.
It's good to have one of those great family days (minus the few hours in the middle). It revives me and reminds me how much I love my job.
This is Clark being enthusiastic about Haley's wound 'on the mend'.
I'd say between my lack of grace and Clark's wound record (8 broken bones before the age of 9) we're doing terrific with only one broken arm and one case of "stitches" thus far (unless you count my episiotomies and C section...and all the trips to the ER for stomach viruses and spinal taps on 2 week olds...and imperforate anuses, or is it an-i?...maybe we're not always in such great shape afterall...but look at how cute, we heal well, I can assure you.)