Trying not to get my hopes up...

(sorry for the crying on the video, Maren was, of course, trying to take the camera away from me)

Isaac goes back to the doctor on Monday. When he broke his leg, the doctors told us he'd be in the cast for 6-8 weeks. Monday will be 6 weeks and five days. He's been such a good sport about the whole thing. In fact, whenever we talk to him about getting it off, he says he wants it to stay on so he can spin. My boy loves his spinning.


I, on the other hand, am not feeling so laid-back about the potential uncasting. Yep, you know me, and I want it off now, for the following reasons:

• The boy has not had a good bath in seven weeks. He's not potty-trained at night either. Lately, more often than not, he decides to quietly poop while wearing a diaper rather than alerting us and going through the whole rigamarole of pooping in a bedpan. Just imagine the funk and you'd probably be about halfway there.


• We have watched SO much tv in the last three months. As soon as he gets his strength back, we are going on a hard-core tv fast for at least two weeks. I know the schedules for Nick Jr, Nick 2, Noggin and PBS Kids by heart. He's happiest right now watching tv, but enough is definitely enough.


• "Play with me." I hear it about a hundred times a day. And I can't just put forth a halfhearted attempt at doing a little bit of business with some action figures. When he says "play with me," he means an involved creative session with me being some kind of bad guy. I feel bad for him, but I'm also eager for him to become a little bit more self-directed.


• My bed. Isaac always went to bed easily, in his own bed, in the dark, by himself. He slept all night there. Eddie took pity on Isaac early on in the saga and started letting him fall asleep at night in our bed, with Eddie, with the lights on. It's become a habit that has stuck, and is particularly hard to manage on the nights when Eddie is at work, and I'm left to nurse Maren to sleep, then lie down with Isaac, while trying to keep the bigger kids occupied and quiet. To complicate matters further, Isaac now wakes up every night between 12-1 o'clock, screaming to come into our bed. But there's not room in our bed for two adults, a child, and a spica cast, so I end up sleeping in his bed. This often results in Eddie turning off my alarm without waking me, and me spending the morning in a pissy panic as I try to rush around and get everyone to school on time. Also, he sleeps on my side. If you think back to my first item on the list, you can understand why I no longer consider sleeping there to be a pleasant experience.


• When Maren was born, we decided against buying a double stroller, figuring that when we really needed strolling space for two kids, we'd use the jogger. However, as I've previously mentioned, Isaac doesn't fit in the jogger right now. Three months ago, it wasn't too hard to stick Maren in the baby bjorn or the sling and put Isaac in the stroller. Now that she's very mobile and too wiggly for the sling, going anywhere with the two of them is next to impossible.


• I miss preschool. And the gym daycare. And church. And going anywhere without looking like a circus freakshow. If I thought traveling with four kids was enough to make people stare, try traveling with four kids, one of whom is wearing a bright blue cast the size of his whole body and another one is running away at full speed, as fast as her 9" legs will carry her.

Monday cannot come soon enough. Isaac has been the greatest little trooper about the whole ordeal, but I'm really ready for it to be over and real life to start again. If the cast doesn't come off, it won't be Isaac who will be crying-- it will be me.