Joshua's first stitches!

We had a roller coaster of a weekend with Joshua. On Saturday, while I was busy trying to get the house organized for family coming the following weekend, Doug took Taylor and Joshua to the park. Joshua really wanted to go to Kidscape Park...so that's where they ended up. They had been playing for a couple of hours when Joshua got up onto the 4 feet tall monkey bars (not the first time this trip per Doug) and was walking on top of them when he slipped and his mouth collided with the metal. Doug heard the thud of his face hitting the bars and turned to see him on the ground crying and holding his mouth. As Doug ran over there, Joshua's mouth was gushing with blood and Doug couldn't tell how bad the damage was, but by the amount of blood, he figured that they were heading to the ER. When he squirted water on his mouth, he saw that his left side of his lower lip had been fileted open and his was afraid of what his teeth might look like. He called me on the way to the ER and I met them there. After 45 minutes of Joshua holding napkins to his mouth in the waiting room, we were called. They were really busy that night and so it ended up being a four hour ER visit. Taylor was a trooper through most of the stay. Joshua held up pretty well, but started declining as he got hungrier and hungrier. At 8:45 they started stitching up his lip and Taylor and I stayed in the waiting room for the first 15 minutes while Doug held Joshua's hand through the stitching. He couldn't feel anything as they kept putting Lidocaine on his lip and had given him Loratab elixir painkiller which made him really relaxed. He didn't even realize what they were doing to his lip. They covered his eyes with a paper towel so all he could see was scissors. They thought his teeth looked ok, but told us to take him to the dentist within 5 days. Taylor and I left and went to McDonald's to get her some cookies and him a milkshake. They got home shortly after us and he gladly drank most of the milkshake. He ended up sleeping on the couch that night (falling asleep to "Sinbad"). His lip made me quite queasy to look at, but thank goodness that all can be healed and he will be fine! I took him to the dentist today and they ended up pulling a tooth that was starting to get loose on it's own, but got twisted into an odd position upon impact. The tooth behind this one on top had been shoved up into his gums and was impacted, but she told us that it should come back down on it's own and we'll have to watch it to see if there's any nerve damage from the impact. It will be a wait and see game. I held his hand through part of the procedure b/c he wanted me there, although, they really didn't want Taylor in the room, so I was needed in two places at once. They decided to let Taylor stay in the room so I could be with him and he did great. So...we are very thankful that both teeth that were affected are baby teeth and that no permanent damage seems to have occurred from this other than a small scar that he will have on his lip. He is a blessed boy!!!