Happy Monday!
We are looking forward to a fantastic Thanksgiving week celebrating with the Sangrey side of things. Always good to get the cousins together and eat too much. ;) I will be making Grandma Sangrey's cranberry sauce and it always makes me nostalgic. Last year I even made her chocolate topped caramel pudding! I hope that she was smiling down on us that day…
However, in looking forward it is always important to reflect on things past… like Neely "losing" her first tooth last Thursday. Unfortunately it happened via "pliers" (that's what they look like at least… I'm sure that Gwen could tell us the technical dental name for them… ;)) in the dentist's chair. That's right, the 6 year old had a tooth pulled!! It was for certain a "Mother of the Year" nomination moment for me. Nevermind that she has already had four fillings to the ZERO that her brothers have had or that she had been complaining that her tooth hurt for about a week before I finally made the appointment (Dr. Roszenweig so kindly said to me in an aside during the wailing, "Just call us as soon as something like this comes up, we'll be happy to fit her in right away". Nice… thanks, I'll keep that in mind…). She just doesn't complain too much and I thought something was stuck in her tooth, ok?! When I finally noticed how swollen her gum was… I made the call. Turns out that her previously deep filling must've irritated her nerve and resulted in an abscess. Lovely. They wanted the tooth out right then. Thankfully (there's the tie-in to this week's theme of thankfulness… just wanted to be sure that you were getting it!), she is exceptionally tough and was taking everything like a champ. However, when she started screaming (not trying to get up or push them away, just screaming "mommy, mommy, it really hurts!"… HEART-WRENCHING), I finally interjected that perhaps she needed a bit more numbing agent? They kept trying to tell her that pressure was different than pain and I could see in her eyes what she was not saying as she nodded politely, "I know the difference you idiots, this HURTS!!". So, the nice new young dentist who is joining our practice kept giving her more numbing agent and then wiggling her giant molar, scream, repeat until Dr. R came in and got the job done with a little more force and quickness.
Even with my background of nasty injuries, it was almost more than I could take (kind of like going into Darin's knee surgery to observe AFTER we were engaged… not wise…). A few hours, some tylenol and a Chik-fil-A peppermint milkshake later when Neely was examining her giant tooth with roots still attached (see pic below…) she remarked on the "long pointy things" sticking out of her tooth that aren't there on the ones that have fallen out of Dryden & Parker's mouths. "Well honey, when a tooth is ready to come out, those roots have worn away and it comes out on it's own because another tooth is trying to come in", I said. She got a "duh" look on her face and exclaimed "Oh… well that makes sense!". As if now all of the tugging and pain finally made sense in her mind. And that was that. Moving on to bigger and better things! Like the "tooth book" at school that she would now get to fill out because she had finally lost a tooth… She is not one to dwell on the negative aspects of things. I have no doubt that will serve her well in the future!!
So… I am here on this Monday hoping for a week when we don't have any emergency dental procedures and can do a lot more personal reflection on the innumerable blessings that God has placed in our paths. I am planning to spend some time with each child individually (or together… it is hard to separate the little buggers…) talking about that as well as doing my own thankfulness inventory.
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