Team Michael

We had taken the whole family down to the park near our house, and the olders had run off to do their own thing.  We suddenly heard this screeching and wailing that sounded barely human-  it turned out to be Michael, hysterical. Another boy had accidentally hit him in the tooth with a swing, and half his tooth had chipped off.  He was bleeding, but fortunately, like all good Northwesterners, we had brought a towel to the playground to wipe the rain off the play structures, so we had something to hold pressure. I took a look.  His lip wasn't cut up too badly, but indeed half his tooth was missing.  My beautiful boy.

He gave me permission to post this.

In the meantime, the other kid was pacing back and forth, wailing, "I'm a terrible person!  I'm a terrible person!  Oooooooooh!  I'm a terrible person!"  My daughter was wailing, because she was so scared.  And then the twins started wailing, because it was the thing to do, while we were trying to give this kid our phone number and call our dentist's office. I'm pretty sure there was no one else in the park, because we had scared everyone away.

from colgate.com

I should mention that Michael in the past year has lost enthusiasm for going to the dentist. He has an overactive gag reflex, was having difficulty with x-rays, and at one point, a hygienist told him that if he didn't brush his teeth better, he was going to need a Root Canal.  In his mind, a Root Canal was about the worst thing that could possibly happen. At any rate, when he found out that he might need a root canal because of the exposed pulp on his broken tooth, he nearly jumped out of the chair. The very nice dentist explained the procedure in detail, which helped mainly because my kid finds comfort in details.

Move over, Edward. There's a new guy in town.

That night he said to me, "Mom. Some things in life are really hard." I wanted to express to him that it was hard to watch your kids go through stuff like that, and so I said, "You know, parenting is really hard..." He interrupted me, "No kidding, Mom. I mean, the twins are super hard to take care of, even for me."  Umm, okay. Then, without skipping a beat, he goes, "Well, at least it's easier to floss now."

I found out the next day that when he got sick of telling people at school the whole story, he started saying that he had been bitten by a 5 y/o vampire, one that had just lost her first tooth.  Which was why only one of his teeth was now pointy.  I understand some girls go for the whole vampire thing, so if American dentistry somehow fails him, at least he'll have that going for him.

*The dentist was ultimately able to fix his tooth, and so far, no Root Canal!