Bad Bad Day!

I thought my day was going well. I dropped the kids off to school, had breakfast with some friends and the sun was shinning. Perfect. Beautiful. I was thrilled with my day. I picked up my kids from school and we had lunch. After lunch was when the day started going downhill and FAST.....

Kaleb lost his 1st tooth. I was NOT prepared or ready for this particular milestone. For some reason it really hit me that my "baby" was growing up. I think I would have been ok with it if it would have been in it's own time. Let me explain. Last week Future and Kaleb were playing and Future kicked Kaleb in the mouth. It loosened his tooth. Actually it BROKE his tooth. It broke one of the sides of the root off. So it was loose and of course Kaleb kept playing with it with his finger and tongue. So today while Kaleb was eating Mac & Cheese for lunch his tooth just fell out. He luckily didn't swallow it. LOL! Anyway, I just was not ready for Kaleb to loose his tooth before he was developmentally ready. There is no permanent tooth peeking through yet and the other root is still inside the hole. I am guessing that it will be a few months before his permanent tooth grows in. :( Oh well, the tooth fairy still pays the same for broken teeth as whole teeth.

After Lunch I picked up Mason from his high chair and realized that he had poop running out of his diaper down his leg. YUCK! So I picked him up and carried him into his room. I cleaned him up the best I could and got the yucky diaper and clothes taken care of. I put Mason into the tub to finish cleaning him up. I was kneeling by the tub when I heard a loud "thud" and then a child crying. Oh No, I thought. Next thing I saw was Kaleb running into the bath room crying and his side of his face covered in blood. I wiped the blood away to see a hole in the side of his head by his temple. I asked what happened and Future relayed that Kaleb was running in the house, tripped and smacked his head on one of our hardwood kitchen chairs. I look at the wound again and I can see the layer of fat hanging out of the open gaping 1 inch gash. I call Tim. I don't know why other than it is a gut reaction. He is in Portland, OR and will be for a few more days. He says to take him to the ER and have them stitch it back together. Ugh. So I press a washcloth onto Kaleb's head and tell him to hold it there. I finish washing Mason and get him redressed (remember he was in the bath after the poopy diaper issue). I text a few friends to see if anyone can help me with the other 3 kiddos. Nope. Nada. No way No how. Nobody would/could help me. So I pile all 4 kids into the car and head to the Emergency Room!

Once at the ER they got us back into a room fairly quickly. Kaleb was very scared. He kept asking over and over what they were going to do to him. I didn't really have a solid answer so I told him they were going to look at the boo boo, put some medicine on it, close the hole somehow, put a band aid on it and we would get to go home. He accepted than answer for a while. LOL! Here is a picture of what it looked like when we arrived, except it was more bloody (this is right after I wiped the blood off.

So the Dr came in and looked at his boo boo. They put some topical numbing stuff on a cotton ball and wrapped his head up in some gauze. Next they gave him some pain medicine/sedation in some oral syrup stuff. Kaleb drank it like a champ! Then they let us sit for like an hour while the medicine worked to numb the area. Here is a pic of him wrapped in gauze:



Future, Jasmyn & Mason at this point are hiding under the bed, crawling around on the chair, laying on the floor (eeewwww, in a hospital who KNOWS what germs are lurking there), getting into the drawers and playing with the stacks of linens. Oy Vey. The nurse asked me "Is there someone I can call to come and get your kids?" Nice Huh? Doesn't she know that I had already called everyone I could? Doesn't she think I would have LOVED some help with them? No instead she had to state the obvious that yes I was alone with 4 kids and they were running a muck! I will still trying to text Roselyn to come and give me a hand, but she was unable to help me. She was my last option. We pressed onward.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but was probably only 1 1/2 hrs the Dr comes back in to check on Kaleb's numbness. He is numb enough. He is Kaleb, right before the Dr started messing with him.

:( He looks scared. :( I get Mason strapped back into his stroller, even though he screamed the whole time. I get Jasmyn & Future sitting in a chair together holding their teddy bears. Dr comes in and has Kaleb put his hands behind his back and puts them into a pillow case and pulled it up to his armpits with his arms pinned inside it. He called it a "cape" but we all know it was really a "straight jacket". LOL! Then they wrapped Kaleb tightly in a warm blanket with his arms still in the pillow case. He looked like a burrito. Next they cleaned the wound with Iodine. Then they had a big male nurse hold his face while I held his body and used a needle with litocaine to finish numbing it. As I was holding him down I could clearly see him injecting the wound. Yucky. I saw at the bottom of the hole was white. I asked the Dr. "ummmm is that his skull?" the Dr. laughed and said, "yup". Kaleb cried and was upset because that part hurt. Next they wiped the blood away and put the white drapes over his face. At this point Kaleb said he wanted to "look at Mommy" So I went to the other side of the bed to help comfort him. I sang to him while the Dr stitched him up. I probably sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star about 6 times. Future and Jasmyn were hiding their faces behind their teddy bears and Jasmyn was crying. Mason cried when they pinned Kaleb down and he was crying. I felt really bad that they had to witness all of this. All in all Kaleb has 6 stitches. 1 inside the wound. And 5 outside. Then the Nurse cleaned the blood off his face, put some ointment on the boo boo and applied a band aid. They gave us our discharge instructions and we were outta there. Kaleb wanted a dilly bar from Dairy Queen so we swung by DQ on our way home. Kaleb was so very brave. He really was awesome. I was so very proud of Kaleb. I was also proud of Jasmyn Future and Mason. They handled the whole thing pretty well, considering. I still wish I could have spared them the experience, but we all survived.

Here is a picture of the stitches and the wound right after the Dr was done sewing.

Here is the Nurse cleaning up the wound and putting ointment in it.

And this is a picture of him at home. All relaxed and better. I put a spider man band aid on it after I took this picture.

And then here is a smile!

I have to say that today felt LONELY. It sucks to be a "single-parent" 5/7 of the week. I know that Tim can't help but work out of town and I am thankful he has a good job that pays our way. But days like today remind me how much I need him with me and how NO ONE can fill his shoes. And apparently nobody else wanted to try! LOL!