April 19, 1995, 9:02 AM

Oklahoma City was changed forever.

I can see the downtown skyline from my neighborhood. As I was outside with Matt this afternoon I looked out over the skyline and pictured the smoke rising in the clear blue sky. It was chilling, to say the least. My heart aches for the families who were robbed of their loved ones. 168 people died that day, 19 were children.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial

Bethany's turn

I need to figure out how to do the color without messing with pixelation. Her eyes look kind of grainy to me. I still love it, though.

I've been playing

This is the photo we used to model Catey's new teeth. I played with it this evening and I love how it turned out.

Bricks are not for eating.

So we spent a lovely 6+ hours in not one, but TWO ER's on Easter Sunday.

My friend Shannon & her daughter had arrived at our house and all four kids were roughhousing in the living room. They got too close to the fireplace and next thing I hear "THWAP!" (yep, just like that) and Caitlin started screaming.

I ran to her and saw that she was holding her mouth. With blood pouring from between her fingers.

Brian got her into the bathroom and spitting blood into the sink, and I glimpsed her teeth in the mirror. My poor baby's front teeth were broken.

So Shannon stayed with the kids and the roasting turkey, and off we went to the nearest ER. Brian sat in the back with Catey and I managed to drive without speeding.

Got to the first ER and by then the bleeding had stopped. They checked to be sure she didn't need any stitches (punctured her lip, thankfully, not a big cut) and gave her some Motrin for the pain, and sent us up to Children's Hospital where there's an on-call dentist. Trip to the first ER, just over an hour and a half.

We had been told that they'd have the on-call dentist there & waiting for us when we got there. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. Nothing is ever that easy when it comes to ER's. We had to do the whole check-in/triage thing, and they sent in a regular pediatrician. FINALLY, they CALL the dentist, who must live over an hour away. After waiting for two hours she finally arrived. I swear she was about 16 years old.

She did a lot of tapping & poking to make sure no other teeth were damaged, then finally put some white composite filling on the two teeth that were broken. The third tooth that was damaged was only knocked looser and was a baby tooth, so we're just going to let that one fall out.

We went to a follow-up dentist on Monday, and they did x-rays. The two teeth that were broken were permanent teeth, so we were pretty concerned. PRAISE GOD!!! There's no additional damage to the roots of her teeth, and the roots are still forming so they should keep on keeping on. YAY!!! Just because my child was BORN in Oklahoma doesn't mean she needs to look like a gap-toothed Oklahoman. She'll still need braces later on down the line, but we knew that before all of this happened.

We were so blessed and lucky in ALL of this. Her permanent teeth were only half grown in. If they had been completely grown in it's likely that they would have been broken all the way up into the gums. The baby tooth was already loose, so there shouldn't be any damage to the permanent tooth that's forming behind it.

The part that I had (and still have nightmares about) the hardest time with is the "couldabeens" in the whole situation. If she had hit her head instead of her teeth she could have cracked her skull, or worse. If she had hit her chin and forced her head back she could have broken her neck. If she had been just a few inches over to the left and hit her eye she could have been blinded. Teeth are easily fixable. Her life is irreplaceable. It was so hard to NOT lose it in front of her when the reality of what COULD have happened hit me.

Needless to say, at bedtime that night I brought the girls into the living room and sat them down by the hearth to make it clear what COULD have happened (hopefully without scaring them TOO much) and try to get through to them, yet again, why it's so dangerous to play rough right next to the fireplace. Hopefully it worked.








The hearth where she whacked herself. You can see how close she was to the corner.
Those white spots aren't just part of the brick. It's pulverized tooth.

The left was completely a powder, not even a grit. The right was a chip. The rest of the pulverized teeth ended up in the sink.

All warm & fuzzy!

If this doesn't make you all gooey and lovey then there's something wrong with you. You must have a heart of stiblah.

Parenting is the most heartbreaking job on earth.

Catey is my more emotional child out of the three. This morning, about 10 minutes after all the kids left for school she came running back in the house just SOBBING. It took me a few minutes and a lot of questioning, but I finally got her to tell me what was wrong.

I was worried that the big girls were picking on her the way to school. No. She misses her grandpa & great-grandma. She's re-written the events of the weekend in her mind and has fabricated this story that grandpa did all sorts of great things with her over the weekend. (Far from it, the lazy ass. He hardly spoke to the kids.) Her great grandma helped her with her chores, so she did get a kick out of that. But she's also decided that they left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to her. UM, NO. They DROVE her to school on Monday morning and dropped her off.

So I got her settled down and drove her to school, and got a phone call from the school secretary half an hour later saying that Catey was in there just sobbing and she wanted to talk to me. It was the grandparents thing again. So I told her I'd come to the school and give her a big hug, but it was her job to go to school and learn and I needed her to do that.

Got to the school and she wasn't crying anymore, until I started talking to her while I was hugging on her. Then she started in on the whole missing grandma & grandpa thing again. Got her settled down again & walked her to class, & she was hanging onto my arm for dear life all the way down to her class.

I went in to talk to her teacher and Amy (the teacher) said that Catey's not been acting like herself for a week to a week and a half now. She told me some of the things she's been doing and the stories that Catey has fabricated. I explained to her the situation of the weekend, and that Catey's grandparents have split up but that they don't want us talking to the kids about it (yeah, that's out the door, we're having a big talk tonight). I also told her that Brian is deploying soon for several months and that he recently told Catey about it. *ding*ding*ding* Her acting up started when he told her that he's deploying.

I'm sitting here crying because my heart is hurting so badly for her. She's afraid that Brian is going to leave without saying goodbye and not ever come back. She doesn't know how to deal with that so she's projecting it onto her grandparents.

Amy said that she'd have lunch with Caitlin once a week from now until the end of the school year, just to give her some special one on one time. And I'm going to have Brian do some special one on one things with the kids, too. I'm going to find a Build a Bear workshop so they can go make a special Daddy animal that they can love on when they're missing him. I'm already planning lots of stuff to keep us busy through the summer, and I believe Cindy is planning on coming down sometime this summer as well.

Good lord this is killing me. Why does parenthood have to break your heart so much?

And this, my friends, is why Alanis is a genius.