Meanwhile....

Owen has been back at school all week and it is not much quieter at home -- the fact is that Elliot doesn't know the meaning of the word quiet and regularly shouts gleefully at the top of his lungs just to....... well, just to gleefully shout at the top of his lungs, I guess.

We are trying to settle into days and times with just the two of us. That means a lot of me peeling him off the top of the couch-back before he jumps with abandon onto the cushions, or me pulling him down off the top of the dresser where he's climbed to put a CD into the player. Sometimes I feel like everything he decides to do is an emergency-room visit in the making.

Case in point, last week (before the Labor Day weekend) Elliot went flying into the hammock with his patented dive and tipped over the edge and fell onto the patio (naturally, right at the moment when my back was turned). He was carrying a stick, and when I heard it happen, I turned and all I saw was blood everywhere. I couldn't tell what had happened at first as there were no broken teeth, just a lot of blood in his mouth. I freaked out (in the inside) but on the outside I calmly asked Owen to get me a washcloth while I comforted Elliot.

Eventually, I determined that he must have split his lip or something because I couldn't see anything else that could cause that much damage..... He calmed down after we read some books and the next day the swelling had gone down and his teeth seemed fine and I decided it must have been just a little injury. But WHY did it happen the exact moment I turned my back on him? Seriously, that is enough to make any mother paranoid. Will I ever be able to turn my back in his presence?

Long story short, a few days later I was finally able to really pull back the lip and saw that he had a gigantic gash in his top gum line (he had not been complaining at all, so I decided it wasn't that serious) but it was icky enough that I knew I needed to take him to a dentist to have the official word that I had not made a bad parenting choice by avoiding the emergency room. But, of course, now it was Friday before a 3 day weekend and no one was available. I worried all weekend and finally 8am on Tuesday morning I called my dentist's office to see if he could take a look at Elliot's mouth. Dr. Taylor was on vacation. Turns out the first week back to school must be a great time for a dentist to take a vacation because then I called around to 8 or 10 different pediatric dentists to find someone ANYONE who could look at my boy's mouth and everyone seemed to be gone for the week!

Finally, I made an appointment for Wednesday afternoon. All the while I'm imagining the worst: due to my extreme negligence at emergency parenting would Elliot's gum be permanently damaged? was it too late for sutures? would his permanent teeth come in crooked because I didn't have him looked at right away?

Long story short, he's fine. The dentist agreed it was healing on it's own. The rip was bad, but not too bad, his teeth looked fine and we were able to get some xrays to confirm there was no damage to his roots. For those interested, I did manage to get this gruesome picture of the injury (taken 1 week after the initial rip):



At any rate, Elliot seems undaunted by the damage and continues to fling himself willy-nilly at pieces of furniture and people -- although I have removed the hammock from his reach.

Sigh.

He has been filling his non death-defying moments with enacting Robin Hood for me. Complete with bow and arrow (fashioned by Paul) and an amazing costume handed down by Aunt Janet whose own kids probably wore it while leaping from tree branch to tree branch. Um, isn't that what you're supposed to do in a Robin Hood costume?

As you can see, my days with Owen at school are not at all boring.