The last week of January Eleanor had her first emergency room worthy injury. I was at my Bar review class and she was at home with Josh.  I don’t know exactly how it happened because I wasn’t there, but Josh said that he was sitting on the bed and she was walking toward him when she fell face first into the wooden bed frame. I guess she went mouth first into it because two of her top front teeth were pushed up and back a little. She was crying inconsolably for several minutes. Once she calmed down a little Josh could see that her gums were bleeding all around her teeth. He called Kaiser to see if he should bring her in and they told him that he should.

I got a call from Josh while I was in class. I could tell that he was trying to sound calm, but was a little freaked out. I left class early and rushed to meet them at the emergency room. I arrived just as the doctor was leaving. Josh looked terrible. He gets queasy around blood and Eleanor’s mouth had been bleeding steadily since it happened. Eleanor looked okay aside from the blood around her mouth. I think she was pretty excited to be in the ER, but she was tired since it was about bedtime. The doctor had said that she was fine, but might bleed for awhile and not to worry about it. We were a little concerned that she would drown in her blood while she was sleeping, but he said that wouldn’t happen and just to give her some cold water before she went to sleep to help the bleeding to stop a little. He also suggested that we take her to a dentist.

She apparently kept bleeding after we put her to bed because I found this in the morning. I luckily thought to change the sheets to ones I didn’t care about before she went to bed.

Later in the week, I took her to a local children’s dentist for her first dentist appointment. The dentist was nice, but Eleanor did not want to hold still for her. She said that Eleanor was fine and that she had shifted her teeth, but not enough to do any damage and that the teeth would shift back into place in a few weeks. They have.

I liked the dentist but I don’t think we’ll go back. We had to wait 45 minutes for our appointment. The first 35 were in the children’s waiting room which was okay, but then we waited 10 minutes in the exam room which is just too long to try hold a one year old who wants to explore all of the interesting dental equipment and does not want to be held. I could understand if they had fallen behind because of late patients or an emergency or something, but no one bothered to explain or apologize for making us wait 45 minutes for our appointment. So I think we will start looking for a different dentist.

The best part of the visit was the time in the waiting room. There was a mom there with her 20 month old boy. Eleanor has not spent much time with other babies so she is always fascinated by them. She followed him around the room as he played, trying to do whatever he was doing. When he tried to open the door to the waiting room to get out she tried to do the same. The problem was that he was still holding onto the handle that she wanted to reach. To solve that problem she reached out with both hands and shoved him to the ground. He was a good deal bigger than her, but fell easily. I had to stifle a laugh and said, “Eleanor, no pushing!” for the benefit of the mom. But it was so funny because of look on the boy’s face. At first he looked a little stunned and then kinda smiled. I think he kinda liked being pushed around. He screamed when mom took him in for his appointment, and then screamed more and pointed at Eleanor when he was leaving after his appointment. His mom said that he must really like her. I can already imagine the trouble we will have when she starts dating.