Oh the Joys

There are just so many joys of being a mother that I can hardly keep track of them all. My particular favorite is that they always keep you on your toes and you never really know what is going to happen next. On Saturday evening we were at the park across the street playing with some friends. Joseph and some of the other kids were swinging and jumping off the swings. They were also wrapping their legs around the swing and flipping over. They have done it a million times so I didn't think anything of it until I heard Joseph screaming. He had fallen off and landed on his face. I ran over and grabbed him and carried him into the house. He had blood running down his face and coming from his nose and mouth. He did a real number on himself. We were able to get the bleeding stopped and it didn't look like anything was cut open just a lot of little things and a huge amount of swelling. Almost like he had been hit in the face with a bat. We decided that we didn't want to sit for the next 5 hours in the ER for them to tell us that he had a swollen face. Not to mention that we have huge fears about the hospital here. There have been many horror stories about it. Anyway..... I kept him home from church the next day. By Monday it was pretty obvious that things were getting infected (pus coming from his nose and cheek) I took him to the doctor and she looked him over and put him on antibiotics. She said that he hadn't broken anything and with cleaning, neosporin, and antibiotics things should heal fine.

So for the last week we have been rinsing, cleaning, applying, and taking medicine. He stayed home from school all week to prevent dirt getting into the wounds and so that we could keep his mouth clean. We picked up all of his work so we had a week of homeschooling. He had some blood blisters on his gums and just a lot of bruising and swelling. On Wednesday we took him back to the Dr for a follow up and as she was looking in his mouth she noticed something and she couldn't see before. It looked like he had torn his bottom lip away from his gums. On Thursday we took him to the dentist and sure enough he had ripped his bottom lip completely away from his gums. The dentist said that he did it down to the bone. It had already started to heal on its own so they are just going to keep an eye on it to make sure that it continues to heal properly. He has to swish with salt water after every time that he eats something to keep it cleaned out. We have one more follow up appointment with the dentist. He was able to finally return to school today. He was secretly happy to go back, but would never in a million years admit it.