One tough girl!!

Shaelyn doesn't normally rank as our "toughest" child, but this week she definitely proved she is capable. Matt and I flew out of town to Annapolis, MD early Friday morning to attend a double wedding of two dear family friends. We left the kids with a babysitter for half of the time and Matt's sister was filling in for the other half. We definitely didn't anticipate it being such an eventful time at home.

When the sitter was picking Shaelyn up from school she and her cousins were running through the parking lot, when she accidentaly caught her foot (poor girl has HUGE feet) on her cousins and wiped out. When she fell she didn't catch herself at all and landed right on her face. (I know just writing that sounds miserable!). She skined up one knee pretty badly, but the real damage was done to her sweet face. She skinned up her chin, mouth, nose, sliced open her lip AND knocked out her front tooth. Of course my heart ached having this happen on a day I'm too far away to hug her and take care of her. The sitter called us right away and Shaelyn was crying, but already proving she was being so brave and tough! Many of you know that she has a lot of teeth issues to start, so I'm pretty strict on what I let her eat, and she's probably a lot more aware of her teeth than most kids her age. She felt so bad that she had knocked one out long before it was supposed to fall out, plus she was in quite a bit of pain. Thanks to the wonders of technology we had pictures of it within a few minutes and I was able to call her pediatric dentist and work out what we should do for treatment. My dear friend was also sweet enough to drop everything and rush to my house to take care of her in a "mom" sort of way! After getting her cleaned up, flushed with salt water and meds, she even took her out for a slurpee. I was so grateful and both Shaelyn and I felt so loved to have such a great friend! (Thanks Jen!!).

It is truly amazing how resilient kids are! I was very proud of Shae for being brave and getting through this miserable afternoon without me there! It was definitely hard for me to be gone. I just wanted to hug her! Her mouth is really healing well. The tooth to the left of her front tooth had some damage too, time will tell how much. Her lip is still swollen, but looks so much better. Her nose and chin are healing. All in all we feel so thankful it wasn't worse!

Here's are the picture we received about 15 minutes after the fall happened. WARNING: They are NOT too pretty! If you have a weak stomach you may not want to scroll down :)

Here she is just a few hours later. Excited because they went back to the school and actually found her tooth. (Amazing in its self!- you can see it in her hand) It was helpful to know she hadn't sucked it into her lungs (a serious health risk), since she couldn't actually remember it falling out.

Her cousins got her balloons too!