Monday, February 7, 2011

Memories of Motherhood

On Monday of last week our two year old granddaughter, Sidney, was having oral surgery to repair the broken bone in her upper mouth which holds her front teeth.  She and brother Baker were playing a game of chase through the house on late Sunday afternoon and, thanks to a misplaced bean bag and too much steam, the game came to an abrupt stop when Sidney fell into the window sill and left a permanent impression of her four top front teeth.  The 911 white firetruck arrived and questioned Baker about what happened.  He was totally awed by the firemen, but rendered speechless by the attention.  He is going to be a fireman when he grows up, you know.  After the situation was accessed, the emergency team left and mommy loaded everyone up and made a fast trip to the ER.  Three and a half hours later no service was received and a bloody faced baby was taken back home. 

Following a long, sleepless night by the whole family, on Monday morning oral surgeon Dr. Nichols operated on her mouth and removed the two front teeth and left the ones on either side in the hopes they would tighten up.  He was so good with her and had such a confident bed-side manner.  He assured everyone that she would be fine and the permanent teeth should be unaffected.  She stayed with Boppie and me the rest of the week to try to keep her from being so active and maybe reinjuring her mouth. 
 
By the third day after the surgery I was having a flashback to the days long, long ago when I was still wet behind the ears and had a house full of little feet running around under and behind me (my three girls and the two to four that I babysat every day).  God surely does know what he is doing when he doesn't give old women babies to raise.  Times have changed and so has my body.  Every muscle in my arms and shoulders ached from trying to grasp a tiny 25 pound, limp wiggle worm Sidney who just did not want to put her pants on after an unsuccessful tenth trip to the potty everyday.  About 10 minutes later we were again fully robed and had on our new Hello Kitties.  For those of us who are past the baby bearing years, those are disposable pull-up training pants so called because of the cute picture on the front.  

The favorite toy at Nonnie's house was Pootie-Tootie Kitty.  We are learning to pet the kitty gently and keep our face away from kitty's face.  This training was all but lost on Sidney.  When the moment seemed just right Pootie received an ever so sudden snatch of the tail and she quickly returned the favor with a swift swat at Sidney's face with a claw exposed paw.  Pootie thought she had won the war until she spent the afternoon outside fighting off the huge yellow neighborhood feline bully.  Pootie's fearful eyes were the size of dinner plates as she hid behind the porch swing and peered in at Sidney all toasty warm in the house sporting 2 small scratches on her forhead.   

On one of our trips to potty - no real action, just a lot of hand washing - Sidney caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  I never saw so many monkey shines and poses as she observed the new look.  Cutest thing you ever saw as she smiled that big toothless grin.

The surgery is all but forgotten by Sidney and she is romping abound like a wild two-year-old again and cute as a button with that toothless little smile.  As for me, my tummy still lurches every time I think about the accident and what happened and, even worse, what could have happened.  God is so gracious and does truly protect his little ones.  Babies look so fragile and yet are like a piece of resilient rubber that can be bent like a pretzel.  Prayers were certainly answered and the doctors say there should be no permanent damage to her teeth.   We are blessed!




STILL GOT THE CRAFTING BUG!

The new sewing machine continues to be so much fun to use.  Just seems like there are not enough hours in the day to get the house work and cooking done while crafting.  So, that means the house work is going lacking and we are eating lots of sandwiches and quick fix meals.  When dolls clothes must be made you just have to do what you have to do. 




Then there is the scrapebooking that has to be done to document our October trip to Oregon.  There are only a few more than 2,000 pictures to whittle down to a manageable number to put on paper.  Being the control freak that I am, I only manage to get about three pages of scraping done per day.  At this rate, it may be garden time before I get finished with this project.  Heaven forbid we have another surgery type situation and it may be Halloween before I can get back to house work.  Now that would be a crying shame delaying the house work.

  

1 comment:

4mckenzies said...

Yikes! It still breaks my heart to read about it! She is cute smiling that toothless grin huh? :)
Poor Pootie.... not really but...