playgrounds aren't for wimps

if there's one thing my kids hate more than anything, it's trips to the doctor's office. they are fine when we talk about what's about to happen in the car on the way there, they are fine when we walk in and they see the giant fish tank, and they are fine when we get called back in to the room. it gets instantly ugly as soon as the nurse walks in. ty turns in to this koala-esque creature who leads me to believe that he may both strangulate me and cause me to go deaf in the same moment. i spend more time with the doctor saying, "what did you say?" than anything else. he does not stop crying to the point of almost-hyperventilation until we are checking out and he is picking a sticker out of the basket (for good behavior, of course). cj, on the other hand, enjoys reminding me approximately 50 thousand times that "the doctor's not gonna touch me, just ty, right mama?" and then proceeds to stick his thumb in his mouth and pretty much challenge anyone who walks in to a staring contest. it's especially fun when it IS in fact cj's turn to go. he not only refuses to take his thumb out or talk, but he also refuses to stand on the scale. i highly enjoy having to stand on there once by myself and then a second time while i'm holding him so the nurse can figure out how much he weighs. (last time i told her i was positive my clothes weighed at least 10 pounds. she just laughed. i wasn't trying to be funny.) i attribute my kids' fear of the doctor to their outstanding health, (which of course is a result of my outstanding parenting.) so i'm sure you can understand how delighted i was to find out upon walking in the house after work the other day that we were about to have to make an emergency visit. bonus- it was lunch time. which leads directly in to nap time, aka my happy hour. this was undoubtedly going to be an ultimate disaster.

i got a call from the babysitter just as i was packing up to leave that i really shouldn't worry, but just to let me know, ty fell on the playground and is bleeding from the mouth. his teeth are fine but he's crying so much there's no way to tell exactly where the blood is coming from. wishing for a second that i had imagined the whole call, i walked in the house to find a little boy sitting on his babysitter's lap who was covered from head to toe in every liquid possible that the body knows how to produce. surprisingly, i didn't freak out. after all, 90% of the time, the kid walks like he's drunk. he falls constantly, and i just assumed this time was a little harder than usual. but because it was his mouth this time, i decided to take him in to be checked out.

after an intense pep talk that concluded with a promise of chicken nuggets for boys who are good for the doctor, i walked in with two quiet, pleasant children in tow. (side note: yes, i bribe my children with food frequently. it works, and i will continue to do it. even if said food is sodium-laden questionable "chicken" that is cooked in a vat of grease. hey, i never said i was trying to win the mother-of-the-year award.)

the nurse checked him out and decided that since the cut was located right where his lip meets his mouth, she was going to have to have plastics take a look at it. Wha??? all of a sudden i had no idea what was going on. Plastics? as in surgeons who make old women look young again? for a 16-month-old with a tiny cut on his face? o.m.g.

about a half hour later, a doctor came in and poked and prodded at my poor little man's lip, mouth and teeth. surprisingly, ty didn't cry once. i knew though that this was too good to be true. when he decided to have a third person come in and look at it, i knew it was the beginning of the end. and right i was. by the time the second doctor came in and attempted to touch his face, ty pursed his lips together so tightly and began to cry. this happened in conjunction with some serious back arching and random arm flailing. while i was starting to sweat from restraining him, and feeling like i was about to cry as well, they were busy deciding that,after all of that, stitches would end up leaving a bigger scar than just leaving it to heal by itself. they did point out the hole in his mouth where his top tooth went all the way through his bottom lip, and said to call back if any of his teeth started turning black. unsure what to say at this point, i'm pretty sure i uttered something ridiculously intelligent like, "ummmmm, okay" as we started to run out the door towards that sticker basket. 5 minutes later, you'd never even know my man had just endured one of the most traumatic mornings of his life to date. he and his brother were two of the happiest chicken-nugget-eating boys i've ever seen.

(and i needed a drink. was it happy hour yet?) ;)