It all started on a Wednesday afternoon when he came home from school & announced that his front tooth kept bleeding ALL DAY (he was very excited about this fact--apparently the blood was not accompanied by any pain). He then proceeded to open his mouth to show me one of his front teeth which was so loose that he could press it flat against the roof of his mouth or have it point straight out at me... Aaack!
I am not normally a squeamish person, but for some reason that wiggly tooth was a little too much for me to take. It seemed to be literally hanging on by a thread & I'm telling you that I was not going to be the one to pull it out of his head. I encouraged him to keep working on it, just as long as I didn't have to watch him to do it.
Once Mr. Crackers arrived home from work & saw the tooth, he quickly took matters into his own hands. He marched C into the bathroom and within 10 seconds the tooth was out.
The strange thing is that within the hour, his other front tooth became just as loose. When Mr. Crackers made the offer to pull that tooth as well, C resisted quite forcefully declaring loudly "I can't loose 2 teeth in 1 night Dad!" I'm not sure why this was a problem, but there was no changing his mind on the matter.
We put him down for bed that night fully expecting him to wake up the next morning missing yet another tooth. When that didn't happen & C had difficulty trying to eat breakfast the next morning, he allowed his Dad to pull his other front tooth as well. When I looked in his mouth to take a closer gander at the new gap, I realized why the baby teeth had come out so quickly. His permanent teeth were already sticking up above the gums.
As you can imagine he was very excited to go to school and show off his missing teeth. He got dressed and ready for school in record time!
After we finished eating dinner later that evening, C and his sister started their nightly game of "let's run around the house wildly chasing each other while screaming." It was a shower night, so they took the game upstairs while I started pulling things together for the second part of the game which is called "let's get in the shower and splash each other wildly while screaming".
As I crossed from C's bedroom into the hallway, I noticed that their game had moved perilously close to the stairs. I also noticed that if K backed up any farther she was going to tumble down the steps & our evening would quickly take a downturn. As I started running toward her to prevent her fall, I began barking out a steady stream of orders... "Stop it guys! K move away from the stairs! C I need to to back off now before she falls!" I then began to drop to my knees to get behind K in case she started to fall (I'd like to remind you at this point that K inherited my lack of grace and amazing capacity for clumsiness. By her 3rd birthday she had already been in a cast on 3 separate occasions. So while my reaction might have been a tad extreme it was not without reason).
Unfortunately C actually listened to me (I know, I was in shock too) and he began rising from his knees to get out of the way just as I was nearing the floor to get to K. Even more unfortunately, as we were both in motion we tried to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time. I felt my knee hit something hard & I went down. Less than a second later, I heard C scream. I knew my knee had made impact somewhere on his person, but I wasn't sure where (except that it was someplace very hard). When I went over to him I realized that the point of impact was on his head -- right over his eye. A lot of worry and many Guilty Mom feelings ensued.
We iced the spot to keep the swelling down & after a lot of frantic internet research we determined that we probably didn't need to make a trip to urgent care that evening. We did, however, visit the doctor the next morning to get it all checked out. Thankfully there was no permanent damage done. And after the initial pain wore off, C bounced right back to his normal goofy self.
It took a little while longer for my Mom Guilt to subside, but knowing that no permanent damage was done helped speed that process along. Of course, even though we all recovered from the incident doesn't mean it has been forgotten.
K tripped over my feet the next day on her way to the family room & fell to her hands and knees (I told you she was a bit klutzy right?). She wasn't hurt, but C looked over at me and said, "Mama, why do you keep hurting us?"
Oh Geez...something tells me that this incident will not be forgotten for years to come. "Remember that time when Mom gave me a black eye? "
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