We are fortunate to have a very sweet little boy.  But our sweet boy is ALL boy.  He can't do anything partway.  Nope, not a chance.  So yesterday on the playground at school when he ran straight into part of the play equipment he didn't do it part way.  Oh, no.

I got a call at work and the first thing I noticed was she didn't immediately say, "This is XXX from XXX and don't worry everything is ok, I'm calling...."  Nope.  In fact that stood out to me.  Instead I heard something along the lines of "This is XXX from XXX and your son has had an accident on the playground."  And she went on to describe what had happened and what they were doing to treat it.  But I found it interesting that they wanted me to come and take a look for myself.  That right there told me that all might not be well.  I remember thinking I'm no expert on mouth injuries.  In fact who do I call - the pediatrician or a dentist?  And hmm...  he doesn't have a dentist yet.

So I get there and you wouldn't know he'd been in an accident until you look closer and notice he is in new clothes, there is blood on his one shoe, and he had blood drool dripping down his chin (seriously what is up with the drool the last few days???).  And at this point I'm thinking that even if his tooth is loose that we likely wait it out.  I'm not seeing anything of immediate concern, but I'm also noticing he isn't letting me see.  And then after a little bit I get a good view.  And I decide that we are going off to urgent care to have it checked out.  Peace of mind for me.  And he's happy to head to the dr.

Once we got there he changed his tune a little when she checked out the wound.  Turns out his gums took the blunt of the blow.  And he did such a good job he had exposed bone.  (No mom should see that!)  And a suture is suggested.  Hmmm...  Not sure how that's going to work.  So they try to help us make an emergency appt with a pediatric dentist in the area.  Apparently a nice Friday afternoon is not good for such things (not that I can blame them).  So they managed to get me in to the dental school at Chapel Hill.  So off we go with a pit stop at Wendy's to go so that we weren't both starved for our adventure (did I mention this all started just before lunch time?). 

There I learn that he is on the border of needing stitches.  Any larger and they would say for certain.  But he was in the gray area and left it up to me.  Ok, so option one was to have my sweet 2 year old boy get stitches in his gum with a local.  The other was to wait and hope it heals quickly enough before he does something else.  Yeah, I don't know about you, but I went with option 2.  Option 1 didn't sound like fun for anyone, much less someone so young that wasn't going to understand.  So I got instructions on what to look for, an emergency number for the weekend (what is it with him and after hours and weekends?), and a list of things for him to do or not do.  Sigh.  One was to keep him as calm as possible for the next 2-3 days.  Seriously?  Still is just not in this boy's nature.  And they were out of protective bubbles, so we are chancing it.  :-)   And trying desperately to explain to his big sister that she has to be careful with him.  And I must say her protective reaction is cute (at first she wasn't so sure about the whole he has a boo boo in his mouth part.  She couldn't see it, so what's the big deal.  Then after breakfast he was bleeding a little.  Now she is VERY protective of him). 

So for now he looks like he went a couple of rounds with someone.  And I hope this is the end of the story.  Course we will follow up with a pediatric dentist to make sure no other damage was done (crossing our fingers on that part!).

But at least you can only really see the busted lip he got as well.  Sigh.  Somehow I see this sweet boy of ours at Urgent Care or the ER more in the future.  I hope I'm wrong, but for now I'm just going to focus on finding a pediatric dentist a little closer to home.  And determine if our medical insurance covers the follow up care.  Or if it would be only covered under dental.  On the plus side he makes me know our insurance benefits.  :-)

And here is the big "protective" sister (with her Pooh all dressed up).  Watching The Princess and the Frog this morning.  Again.  This apparently has replace The Little Mermaid as her favorite movie.

And pretty soon he'll be back to this.  (Notice the drool in the picture.  Seriously what is with that the past few days?  A new molar coming in?)