Grace Takes A Trip to Urgent Care

Grace is fine, mostly, but here's the story.

We were having a wonderful dinner, and Grace had just finished. She'd been running around naked, to air out a bit, so she wasn't in her safety tested play pen where there's carpet, she was running about on the hardwoods (in case we needed easy cleanup). We suspect what happened next is her foot tried to get purchase on a CPR brochure that she had just tossed to the ground, and she slipped forward, her little mouth hit the corner of the coffee table on the way down, making a loud thud in the process.

Immediately, there was just a ton of blood in her mouth and around her mouth and flowing like water from a tap. It was hard to figure out exactly where it was coming from, but at least one spout was in the corner of her mouth. I picked Grace up and headed to the bathroom, as Betsey rushed past me to get supplies. In getting to the bathroom, I assessed that she had cut the corner of her mouth, and hopefully nothing else. I quickly found a clean pre-fold diaper in my hand, via Betsey, and applied pressure. Betsey attempted to look up the Urgent Care hours on the iPod, but Grace's screaming was rendering inoperable the human to iPod interface part of her brain. She put a diaper on Grace, I grabbed her clothes, and in two winks we headed to the Clinic.

We arrived at the Clinic to find urgent care still open (it was about 6:30). Betsey got out with Grace, and I parked the car. When I got into the clinic, I found the admission woman explaining that they don't usually take children under two, so she'd rather send us to a Good Sam urgent care, but first she wanted to call them and check that they would take us, since sometimes the insurance gets weird about taking Clinic patients without a reference. This seemed odd. Why would URGENT CARE care? It would have been infuriating if Grace wasn't being fairly delightful; Besides the occasional sobs, she was basically just trying to sign that she wanted the flower toy in the admission window.

Once they confirmed the other Urgent Care would take us, they asked if we knew where it was. We had assumed she meant the hospital about 100 meters down the road, but no she meant either the one in Albany or the one across town. She said we could go to the hospital, but it was way more expensive. We're guessing that's because instead of Urgent Care, they only have Emergency Care.

So we drove, and Grace, who usually only tolerates the car seat, was pretty vocal that on top of a serious gash, this was an insult.

At the Good Sam urgent care, things went much better. Admittance was quick since both Grace and Betsey were in the computer system already (Betsey labored and Grace was born at the Good Sam hospital that we had just driven from). Grace continued to be delightful and sob at the same time.

After about a minute of waiting, a nurse came for us. We huddled into the hall. We did the normal check-in things. I can tell you that Grace weighs 18.6 lbs. and stands about 27.75 inches tall. Her temperature was 97.6° F: A little cool from just being in a diaper in an air-conditioned car. Then we waited.

After about five minutes, the doctor came in. He was mostly concerned that she was not concussed, which we assured him she wasn't. He then took a look at Grace's mouth. Our main concern, because the cut was so big, was that she might need stitches. The cut starts on the inside of her mouth, near the corner and extends out in a very clean cut towards the nearest Commissure right up to the Upper Vermillion Border at that point.

medscape.com

He said it was a tough call. A cut that big on the inside, you leave alone. A cut that big on the outside, you stitch. A cut in a wriggly little girl's mouth that straddles the line between in and out, is a tough call. He went to get another doctor.

The other doctor came in and looked at Grace's cut. He stepped back and said the exact same thing. It's a tough call. The risk of Grace moving and causing further trauma during the procedure was basically too much. Additionally, Betsey pointed out, there would be essentially no way to keep her from picking the stitches.

So we asked a few remaining questions about cleaning, feeding, pain killer, and then we set off for home. We were home a little before 8, just in time for Grace's bed time. We gave her infant's ibuprofen, fed her, read to her, and put her down. She finally fell asleep around 10:30, after many many trips to her room, reassuring her that we loved her dearly.

Tomorrow, she'll go see her regular doctor to check for infection and to double check for any other damage that might have been missed. Also, we're ordering corner bumpers for the coffee table.

Good night.

Cuteness Report

For a while now, whenever Grace has wanted to read a book, or I have wanted to read a book to her, I have put her on my lap before beginning.

About two weeks ago, she started bringing me the books and putting them in my hand, which was pretty cute on its own, and she started climbing into my lap, which made it beyond cute really.

So on Father's Day, I got up early to play with Grace, and by play I mean I was laying on the floor with my head on a pillow and a blanket covering me while she gallivanted around the play area. Grace decided that she wanted me to read a book, but I was not in my usual cross-legged sitting position. Undaunted by my prostrate positioning, she sidled up to me, placing her bottom near the top of my chest. She dropped a book into my hand, which was near my face, and placed her head on my cheek. We read the entire book like that, and I got a few bonus seconds after the book was done before she ran off. Best Father's day gift ever, even better than the Timber's tickets she bought me.

Another cute thing that started on Father's day, was I tickled her with a little stuffed frog. When I tickled her, I repeated "Tickle Tickle Tickle" for the duration. Now when she's in the mood for a tickle, she'll say "Tick uh Tick Tick uh Tick Tick".

There's so much cuteness every day that it's impossible to catch it all in words, but these are my two favorites from the last few days.

11 Days Later

This plan is at risk of falling apart. Here's the expanded notes I've been keeping since the last post.

I had a cough for a few days, and Grace started mimicking it, but in a way that was almost satirical. "Oh poor dad!"

Grace has had a really sad bottom. This has put potty training on hold. She's actually pretty tummy sick, poor thing, and hopefully we'll get some test results back from the doctor shortly.

She is enjoying playing outside. It was previously too cold, wet, and icky for her. It's well into spring now in the Willamette Valley, so she's getting 2/7ths of a week of sun, and she's making the most of it.

Her sign for "flower" is improving. Actually, all of her signs are improving, except the ones she's decided she can say satisfactorily. They just disappear. On that note, in addition to signing "All Done", she now says "Aw Daw", which means we basically get to expect her to stop signing all done. When I wrote that a week ago, it was a prediction. Today, it's a fact. Getting her to sign "All Done" seems almost random at this point.

These last two weeks Grace has picked up these signs: Cow, Butterfly, Baby. Of course, all in the uncontrolled movements of a 1 year old.

Grace has started to call food, "Ffff", which is decidedly less cute than the previous "Mmmmmm". I'll be sad when "Mmmmmm" is retired for good.

I've been "Ma Da" this week, while Betsey has retained the title of "Ma Ma".

Napping and sleeping is working out really well. The training was harder on Betsey than me. I slept through it mostly, while she sat and listened to her favorite little friend cry out at night (Grace never cried for more than 15 minutes before mama checked on her, even when it was a 40 minute session). I'm not that strong, and now that my sleep debt is slowly going away (Grace is sleeping up to 10 hours at a time) , I'm in debt to my amazingly strong wife.

Grace is really grasping how drawings in her books relate to real world items. It's been fun watching that little part of her brain click.

Oh Yeah

I'm kind of remembering now that I usually don't have much to say after a work day.

Betsey tells me that she got the sign for "dog" down today. She's been saying "leaf" ("lee") for a couple days.

We went out to the backyard when I got home and enjoyed the sun for half an hour. Grace played with some "lee"s and dropped a few quarts of snot on the lawn. Her nose has been running spectacularly.

I think for the rest of the work week, I'll just keep notes, and then push out Tuesday through Friday all at once.

Late Night, Late Post

Grace didn't do too hot last night (Saturday night). We're trying to get her to sleep through the night by minimizing how long we'll comfort her. Betsey's doing an amazing job at it; I can't seem to help myself and always end up staying too long with Grace. As a result, Betsey has been doing most of the effort.

We had a fairly lazy day after that. Betsey was super tired.

I moved our Dracena to a lighter room. It's almost dead, but I'm hoping to revive it.

We took a family-walk around the neighborhood. My first time trying out our new Ergo. It's pretty cool. Grace seemed to have fun in it by, leaning back as far as she could, looking straight up into the sky.

As the evening approached, I got tired of looking at our neglected plum tree, watched some internet tutorials, and went out to prune it. The girls sat near by and watched as I took a saw and some clippers to it. It looks good.

I had a late night soccer game. We lost, 2-3. After the game, Nick and I had a beer and caught up on life.

I got home way too late, didn't post this, we had Grace's bed transition to deal with, and now I've woken up late for work. Stay tuned for Monday's post tonight.

Let's Try This

Short post, with day highlights, most nights....

Today, I woke up before the girls and mowed the lawn. Not a big deal, except we have a huge lawn, and I kicked its butt.

We attended the first peer-birthday party that Grace has been invited to. She had fun. The birthday boy was pretty unsure about candles. His Grandpa was proud of that. It was pretty cute.

Grace, indicated she needed to use the potty, we put her on it, and she went potty. We're very proud. Hopefully this keeps up.

Grace has got "barrette" down as a sign. I'm working on a Grace signs list so you can all be super impressed at her vocabulary.

Tonight is her first night sleeping in her crib. She's been using it for naps as a way of working her into it. So far she's been in bed for 3 hours, and only needed 5 minutes of re-assurance. Wish us luck.