Chick-fil-OUCH

All right. So I know two trips to Chick-fil-A in one week (remember this?) is a lot, but the first one was because I’m so tired because Rylan has been waking up twice every night (slept straight through til 5 am last night, though!) that I couldn’t entertain my children without naptime and Jacey has been phasing out naps, and then today we went because I’m going to start baby-sitting next week (more about that later) and I wanted to make the most of only having two kids and being able to get out and about.

[Insert huge breath in here.] That was quite the run-on sentence. Moving on.

On Fridays, the Chick-fil-A near my grandparents’ house has a preschool play-house thing where, from 9:30 to 11, they have crafts and songs and stories and Play-Doh playtime for little kids. So, after speech today, we headed off to do that. Jacey painted pictures (the paint glows when light shines through it, so we’ll be taping the one we kept on our window) and made a bracelet out of “beads” made by cutting colored straws into small pieces. She had some breakfast, then she went to play.

You know what’s so un-funny about this? I was part of a conversation just two days ago on Facebook about those annoying moms who don’t sit in the play area and watch their kids at Chick-fil-A and McDonalds, where I told the people, “Hey, guess what, I’m one of those moms. I check on her every few minutes, but I don’t sit there and watch her the entire time she plays, and she’s fine!”

Haha, Universe. Very funny.

I checked on Jacey, then went back to sipping my sweet tea and watching Rylan eat. Two minutes later, I glanced back again–and saw Jacey standing up, her hands going to her mouth, and wailing. Clearly, screaming and crying. Two other moms in the play area were on their way to her.

I ran. I left Rylan at the table and ran to the play place.

I saw the blood before I even picked her up.

She had face-planted on the lowest step of the play structure. The first thing I could tell was that her top gums were bleeding.

I went back to the table and mopped up what blood I could with napkins, occasionally having her spit. I touched her teeth… one wiggled. Clearly, I needed to take her to the bathroom to help her rinse her mouth out, but I couldn’t manage to take her and Rylan together, and there was nobody in the restaurant that I knew to watch Rylan.

But thank goodness my grandparents were close. I called them, and they headed up immediately. In the meantime, some nice strangers got us a bag of ice and I made several calls to Kellen.

And I discovered that some of the “dried” blood I was wiping off Jacey’s lip… kept coming back.

One of her teeth actually punctured her bottom lip.

Poor baby!

So here’s the damage: her top, front, left tooth is a little bit loose. Her gums are pretty purple. Her top lip is a little bit swollen. Her bottom lip is really swollen on the right side. There’s a small line where her tooth went all the way through her lip. The inside of her bottom lip has at least three cuts from separate teeth.

Daddy came home from work to help me figure out what we needed to do. After calls to the doctor, multiple dentists (apparently some dentists don’t work on Fridays?), friends for referrals (if you missed a call from me… I was wondering who your pediatric dentist is!), and my sister-the-almost-doctor, we decided to just keep an eye on her. The cut on her lip is so small and she’s so young that we figure it’ll heal pretty well by itself and shouldn’t scar. Her tooth, the dentist said to just keep an eye on and come in if it gets gray.

She looks pitiful, and she’ll be sore for a while–I ran to the store for yogurt, pudding, and applesauce to help her get through meals for the next few days–but she’s okay. She was really brave, letting us touch her mouth to check her out and holding the ice on her lip.

And I’m pretty proud of how I handled it. Within three minutes of it happening, I got a call from Jenny, a friend of mine from high school. She just had a baby and we’d been playing phone tag. I answered because I didn’t want to miss her again, and anyway I had literally just picked up the phone to call Kellen. When we actually got to talk later in the day, Jenny said she was surprised at how calm I sounded. “Well, yeah,” I said. “I had to stay calm for Jacey, or she’d get scared.”

“Talking to you, I thought it was no big deal, but your voice didn’t match up with the words you were saying,” she told me. “Something didn’t jive.”

Whew. I’m glad I sounded calm. I was a little shaky later, but I knew, at the moment, that I had to stay calm and just handle the situation.

I know, having a boy, I can expect to spend lots of time at the emergency room, and learn when bumps and cuts look doctor-worthy and when they’re no big deal. But when my oldest is just three, and she’s a careful little girl, seeing that much blood is scary!

Anyway, we’re okay. We made it through our first frightening-injury-in-public situation.

And now you have an explanation for Jacey’s fat lip(s) next time you see her.