It’s been a bit of a hard couple of days — my parents left and we were sad to say goodbye. It was so great to have them here, and we had been looking forward to their visit for so long, so now I feel like it’s back to reality (or figuring out what my new reality is :)) It’s hard not knowing when we will see them next, but I know we will figure it out soon. It definitely makes me appreciate the fact that we normally live in the same city together, and it’s a hard adjustment to be so far away from each other.

Isaac also took a tumble over the weekend (he and my dad got tangled up and both tripped and both got a little hurt) and twisted his ankle. He couldn’t really bear any weight on it, so we were having to carry him around everywhere and he was in pain.

When we first took him to the doctor here, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t broken, so he sent us to the children’s hospital ER (here they call it A and E) to get X-rays. It was our first exposure to the medical system here, and it’s definitely different. First of all, in the doctor’s waiting room, there was no receptionist or numbers or anything. People just sort of walk in and see who was before them and then figure out when their turn is to see the doctor. Adults and children both see this doctor we went to, but when I asked him if he does regular checkups for kids, he seemed confused. I’ve asked a few other people how it works here with child well visits, and they all seem confused with what I’m talking about. It seems that kids get all their vaccines here but then I’m not sure whether they go for check ups after that. I’ll have to look into it some more.

The ER was a little different too. Luckily I had never had to take the kids to the ER back home, so I don’t have much comparison, but the children’s hospital in general is definitely less of a nice facility here than at home. It’s just older and more run down feeling. I think the care is fine, it’s just a little different physically and feeling wise. Not sure if that has to do with it being a public hospital (everyone can get access to medical care here) or whether all the hospitals are like that. We had to wait for about 3 and a half hours all together (in addition to the hour wait at the doctor before that), so it was a long long day.

Thank goodness my parents were still here (though I felt bad they had to spend their last day here in the ER with us) — I don’t know how I would have managed with both boys otherwise. Thankfully Isaac’s foot isn’t broken — just sprained, so they gave him kind of an ace bandage type thing (a magic sock we call it), and slowly the past few days he’s been walking and limping on it a bit more. Hopefully it’ll heal soon and he can be back to his normal bouncing off the walls self!

So between Isaac’s foot and my parents leaving, it’s been a little tough, but I know we will get through it. I’m excited though because we are going to Edinburgh, Scotland this weekend for a few days. Monday is a bank holiday, which is one of several national holidays/days off here throughout the year, so we will have a long weekend in Edinburgh. I’m looking forward to it! Also, I still have to write about last weekend when we visited the countryside in the west of Ireland with my parents. It was gorgeous, and I’ll write about that for my next entry!