Continue weekend recap

Friday March 19, 2010

Morning.

We all slept in a bit and then woke to get ready to take Annabelle for her 3 year portraits. Tom & I took her while Nate & Nana went to do some grocery shopping.

The photo shoot went fabulous. This woman we found purely by chance is so great with the kids; they are putty in her hands. Every time I get pictures I buy a lot thinking “I will never get pictures this nice again”, but then I do. About halfway through the session I turned to Tom and said “we are going to be spending a lot of money today”, he just laughed and said “good”. It was so fun so watch as each one was better than the last, Stacey has real talent. So I sat in front of the computer purchasing pictures while Tom & Annabelle played with the bead table and mailbox in the waiting room. Then we took her to ride the Easter train. We had to leave without having lunch because Tom had to get to work by 2 and it was almost 1 o’clock. We dodged a near catastrophe as we were walking out Tom said “where is monkey?” and we realized he was not in Annabelle’s hand as usual. I retraced our steps and found him right at the entrance to the train. Whew.

Afternoon

So we get home and head in the house. Grace had Nate in the bathroom and he was crying. I stuck my head in to see what was the matter and was greeted by lots of blood. He had just fallen down a few stairs; you could see his tooth sticking at an unnatural angle. Tom called the pediatrician as we were headed down the walk; she said to bring him to her first before going to the ER.

We arrive at the peds office and are seen right away. Nate had calmed down by now after several rounds of “Old MacDonald” in the van on the drive over. She takes one look and says we need to head down to Children’s Hospital down in the city. She thought he might need to see a Pediatric Oral Surgeon, of which there are none in our county. She checked him all out and determined he had no other injuries so off we went. He slept most of the hour & half drive there. We arrive and despite our doctors reassurance that “she was calling to let them know we were coming” we still waited for 2 hours until we saw anyone in a white coat. The one highlight of our long wait was Josh (who lives in the city) showed up. My sister Karen had called to let him know his Godson had this accident and he rushed right over after class. He walked in and Nate pointed at him and yelled “Josh!” (He calls both the twins Josh but we are working on that) He was immensely relieved to see him running around and alert. Except for the constant trickle of blood coming out of Nate’s mouth he appeared to be fine.

We finally see a resident and then a doctor who both agree there are no jaw fractures and he needs to see a dentist. They have to call a dentist in; she arrives and determines the tooth cannot be saved as you could see the root. So in comes the Anesthesiologist. Nate is given a liquid dose of something like baby Valium and he is immediately loopy. The dentist and I sit knee to knee with Nate on our laps while the resident holds his head; she removes the tooth and stitches up his gums. We hang out for a short while longer until I convince the doctor to let us go explaining it is an hour past his bedtime and we have an hour and a half ride home. She releases us with the warning to call if he has any problems shaking the anesthesia.

This picture was taken after the extraction and stitches. I didn’t want any of him prior to that as I’ll be trying to forget that image. I had changed his clothes (throwing the blood soaked ones away - they were never coming clean) and washed his face & hair. He is just kind of high, fascinated by the towel and hanging out on the bed waiting for doctor to release us.

We arrive home after 10 o’clock, put Nate in his bed and do a few things for the next day’s party, then head to bed ourselves at about 1am.