In the Blink of an Eye

Sometimes in life, we get reminders that things can change in the blink of an eye.

For example, we had a lovely afternoon at an art & music festival...

 We played around...

 Saw the sights...

 Danced around...

I went from having my eyes welling up with tears of joy at the sight of my two kiddos dancing and having a blast, to tears of sadness for my hurt baby. Sometime after this last photo was taken, Oliver tripped and fell face-first on the asphalt. Immediately, my tough guy was crying hard and gushing blood from his mouth. It was several chaotic minutes before we could wash out his mouth enough to see what was going on. It was his upper gums bleeding, and it looked like his front teeth were tilted backwards.

We had walked to the festival, so we headed back home. Thankfully, Oliver asked to nurse shortly after we started out walking, so I sat down on some steps to nurse him and then nursed him while walking the rest of the way home. As a sort of comical side note, he was super heavy to carry and nurse while trying to speed walk home...so it was a bit awkward passing our neighbors in this frenzied state with me nursing Oliver, who insisted in having his hand up my shirt but refused to let Eric pull the shirt down over his arm and the top of my breast. Oh well. It was an emergency--what're you gonna do?

A call to our pediatrician resulted in a recommendation that we go to our local children's hospital that has pediatric dental staff 24/7, so off we went. Both boys fell asleep in the car on the way, which was a real blessing for my frazzled nerves. Oliver continued to sleep until we were part of way through our ER waiting room wait, and Ellis slept until we were out of triage, so it worked out really well, all things considered.

It turned out that Oliver had, in fact, knocked his front teeth loose. Unfortunately, there's  nothing to be done at this point, so we're just waiting to see if they tighten back up, or if they will fall out. The good folks at the children's hospital seemed optimistic that they'll tighten back up after a few days.

Oliver is doing remarkably well. We will keep an eye on his teeth to make sure they don't get so loose they're going to fall out and choke him... then he'll see his regular pediatrician Friday.

As a parent, it's so unsettling to know that the possibility of these fun-one-moment-disaster-the-next times exists. So then the question becomes: am I going to watch my children more carefully, hover a little closer, yell, "Be careful!" a little more? Or am I going to hug my children a little tighter, smile a little wider, and use common sense to keep them safe as best I can? For me, I'll probably have a few more days where it makes me nervous to watch Oliver walk across a room in that precarious-looking, lurching-forward way that toddlers do; then, I'll choose option two. I can't protect them from everything--as much as I'd love to--so I'll do my best and enjoy dancing and laughing.