Clara hurt her foot in the car accident last week. X-rays haven’t shown anything to be broken but with all the soft tissue damage, she’s still unwilling to walk on it. She has been getting around with a combination of hopping on one leg (she’s getting excellent balance out of the situation), begrudgingly using a pair of crutches (And by begrudging-I mean they get thrown across the floor and called stupid at least once a day) and her favorite method, scooting.  Clara leads with her bad foot in the air and zooms around on her butt pushing with her good foot and arms.

While all of these are decent options from getting from place to place when you only have one good foot, she hasn’t yet figured out how to carry much with any of these methods. If we were the kind of family who was ready to go places in plenty of time, it would be no big deal that she forgot the absolutely critical item that she must bring with her upstairs when we are headed out, but we aren’t. We are more of the, hurry-up-we-should-have-left-five-minutes-ago family and so Clara has gotten lots of extra help in the last days, even for things that she could technically do for herself.

The extra attention Clara was getting sat well with everyone for the first few days but now, just over a week in, there are a few people (her older sister in particular) who are ready for Clara to be able to carry her own dirty dishes to the dishwasher.

The evenings are particularly difficult. Clara is extra exhausted from a day of hobbling about and Ivy is extra fed up with being the older, helpful sister. Girls that normally get along are feeding off one another’s grumpiness, mountains are being made of mole hills and fights are breaking out.

Except for one night.

One night there was no fighting. Just Ivy watching Clara scootch across the floor and then oh so politely asking,

“Hey Clara. Wanna play tag?