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By Sally Torbey
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the ...
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About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the challenges of having a satisfying family life in a community where parents set a high bar for themselves, their children, and the schools and organizations that educate and socialize them. I grew up in the Midwest, attended a small liberal arts college on the East Coast and graduated from medical school in Chicago. I left a pediatric residency to care for our then infant son and spent the next dozen years contentedly gestating and lactating while having four more children. My husband grew up in the Middle East, came to the US for graduate school and works in high tech. Our eldest son graduated from a UC, and after working in the Middle East for a few years, now attends law school in NYC. Our eldest daughter graduated from a Midwestern Big Ten University and is a journalist in Texas. Our middle child studies engineering at a UC. The youngest two girls are in middle and high school in PAUSD. We are celebrating 20 years as PAUSD parents! I volunteer in the public schools, our church, and scouting.
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An injury
Uploaded: Mar 4, 2015
Last week our 12-year-old daughter broke her ankle playing basketball. It is just short of miraculous that we have five kids and have had only one other bone broken. That bone was less than an inch long (a pinkie finger), so only a minor convenience.
I would have preferred this ankle injury had happened to anyone in the family other than our youngest. The rest of us would welcome the opportunity to relax, catch up on some reading, and enjoy a few movies, but for her the inactivity is very distressing. For the first 24 hours after the injury, when she wasn't asleep, she was crying. Not from pain, but because she was inconsolable at missing so much in the next month, including but not limited to: the rest of basketball season, a dance performance, two swim meets, a water polo tournament, an ice skating party, and a ski trip.
I cried for the first day, too, from the knowledge that I am completely inadequate to the task of keeping our now couch-bound Energizer Bunny happy without her usual physical activity. She is a perpetual motion machine and enjoys exerting herself during most of her waking hours.
I was also dreading negotiating the school traffic mornings and afternoons. We live where we do because our children have, for the entirety of their PAUSD education, transported themselves by foot or bike to and from school. Even when I relent and drive the kids in the pouring rain, I avoid driving closer than three blocks to any school. With her using crutches, I will actually be driving into the parking lot during the school rush.
I am confident that she will make a full recover from her injury. I hope I will, too!
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