What a day!!

So... Today was just fantastic.
Morning was as usual and fairly uneventful.
My cousin had wanted to have DS over at his place to do some Christmas cards
and crafts.
The plan was that I was going to bring DS to my cousin's house in the
afternoon - around 330ish.
I figured I'd feed the kids lunch around noon-ish, put DDs down for an
afternoon nap, leave the house around 3ish. I had to make one quick stop
not far from me before my cousin's - my mom is out of town for the day and
asked me if I'd be able to pick up some supplies for her so she can make
chocolates of some sort tomorrow. No problem, the place wasn't far from me
at all, and would not be at all out of my way to get to my cousin's and drop
DS off.
Well, lunch time rolls around. I decided that maybe we'd go to this take
out pizza place where you walk in and walk out with a ready pizza.
Kids all have shoes and jackets on, we walk out the door. I turn around to
lock the house door and DD1 wipes right out in the yard on the sidewalk. I
ran to her for some reason. Normally she's known to be fairly clumsy, and
it's not too uncommon for her to be tripping over her own feet. For some
reason, I ran, even though she was maybe 10' away from me at the most. I
pick her up and her mouth is just starting to bleed. I look and she managed
to break her 2 front teeth. One is chipped on the bottom, the other looks
broken off almost in half. I am now the one that is just about freaking. I
run her inside (at this point, I really am just about freaking out, and I
KNOW I don't handle these kinds of situations well at all) and sit her down
at the table, grab a face cloth, wet it with cold water and shove it in her
face on her mouth.
Then I'm on the phone with the 24/h health line... I don't know why. Maybe
because I didn't know where else to call. It didn't seem like a 911
emergency, but it was a Saturday afternoon and I didn't know where else to
call. After being on hold due to "large volumes of calls" - which is every
single time I've ever called - I hung up and went to the computer, looked up
"emergency dental" and called this emergency dental clinic.
I just quickly explained what happened - we were walking to the van, I
turned to lock the door and she somehow wiped out and smashed her teeth. I
said I was concerned because one tooth is really badly broken, I didn't know
if she just broke them or if she knocked some teeth loose, or if they were
sharp and might cut her tongue or what... I just said I think she might need
to be seen by the way they look just to be safe. I also explained that this
is a 3 year old that doesn't really communicate with words well at all.
They told me to come right in right away, if I could. We skipped the lunch
idea for the time being and headed to the dental place.

Turns out she cracked it REAL good. There was a nerve or something exposed
on the one really broken tooth, the other one wasn't any real concern,
medically. The dentist ended up putting something on it to cover this nerve
(I think it's a nerve? These are just baby teeth) and we now have a
referral to a pediatric dental place. The dentist wanted to put some sort
of a filling on it, but he just covered it up somehow. We were there for
well over 2.5 hours, ALL the kids were hungry, both girls were VERY tired
and cranky and DS was really no better - but really, I can't blame any of
them... I was hungry, tired and cranky myself and did not want to be there.

I just feel so horrible. I now thing I should have just made some chicken
noodle soup quickly for lunch, tossed the girls in bed for a nap and then
gone on with my day as I had it planned out.

I just ended up passing on the pizza idea and we did McDonald's drive-thru
instead and the kids ate in the van while we headed off to my cousin's to
drop DS off. Now DD1 needs to have her teeth repaired and properly fixed...
She had such nice teeth until this happened The dentist told me he'd
just do an emergency fix that would hold fine until we could get to the
pediatric dentist, but if she has any complaints or problems before that,
just call them back and they'll deal with it, but he strongly recommended
the children's dental place because of her age and what happened. I just
feel horrible about this and just keep thinking we just should have had a
bowl of soup for lunch! Obviously it's not really my fault... Who's to say
if we would have just stayed in for soup, and did as I had planned, that she
wouldn't have wiped out on the way to the van when we were going to take DS
to my cousins, and if that happened, it probably would have been an even
bigger headache and there's a good chance DS would have been REALLY late for
his Christmas craft date with my cousin.

On a side note, while I was there, the one receptionist was great. She
offered to keep an eye on DS and DD2 while I was a bit busy with DD1 when
she went in to see the dentist. Then, after we left, she followed me out of
the building to where I was parked, and as I was putting everyone in the
van, she was right behind me (kinda scared me just a bit!) and she just
basically said, "Oh, I noticed when you were in that you're pregnant... Do
you know what it is?" I thought that was kind of strange, but I said it's a
girl. She asked me if there was anything that I might actually need - she
said she had a whole bunch of baby girl stuff at home that she wasn't sure
what to do with it. Tons of clothes, high chair, etc. I found it kind of
funny because after DD2 was born, she was supposed to be the very last one,
but then this next one came as a big surprise. I actually had given away
most of the stuff I had as DD2 grew out of it and didn't need it anymore.
I've given away probably 8 or 9 garbage bags of baby girl clothes, gave away
my high chair, bouncy chair... Most of the things that I didn't need
anymore.
She asked me if I could use clothes and other baby items and I really could.
Seeing as now I am on a VERY tight budget and have already bought and then
given away a bunch of stuff I had, I really could put a lot of things to
use.
She even said, if it was alright with me, that she could even maybe give me
a call and drop the stuff off to me on one of her days off. She has my
phone number/address and info from DD1's appointment.

So, I guess, it was kind of a funny thing at the end of what was a horrid
afternoon! LOL Poor DD1... Now I have to deal with all of that and this
childrens dentist stuff Luckily, though, I was told they could fix her
teeth cosmetically and also fix that nerve thing going on properly and
permanantly. Even luckier was that we went for pictures of the kids just
yesterday night LOL

Kat wrote:

Kids all have shoes and jackets on, we walk out the door. I turn around to
lock the house door and DD1 wipes right out in the yard on the sidewalk. I
ran to her for some reason. Normally she's known to be fairly clumsy, and
it's not too uncommon for her to be tripping over her own feet. For some
reason, I ran, even though she was maybe 10' away from me at the most. I
pick her up and her mouth is just starting to bleed. I look and she managed
to break her 2 front teeth. One is chipped on the bottom, the other looks
broken off almost in half. I am now the one that is just about freaking. I

I'm so sorry about the teeth. Accidents with teeth are one of the
things that make me panic.

--Betsy