CHICLET!

 You know the expression, "When you've reached the bottom there is no where else to go but up?"

Bologna, with a capital B!

What they (and who the heck are "they," anyway?) don't tell you is that sometimes life throws you a shovel while you're down there at the bottom of your murky, stinky, poopy pit... and you just keep digging deeper.

Let me explain:  I've had a long week.  Everyone in my household is sick AGAIN.  Kids and McHubby are crabby and ornery.  We've had additional stresses unrelated to illness that don't warrant any "blog love."  It's been a weird, hectic, and lousy week.  I'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with the cosmos.  Are the planets aligning?  Is it a full moon?  Where are the hidden cameras?!  Is a camera crew lurking about my bushes?!

A couple of nights ago, I took Ms. Lilly and the Cam Man to McDonald's.  Not just to the drive-thru.  INSIDE the restaurant.  By myself.  Against my better judgment.  Lilly had been acting stir-crazy all day, and was itching to run around the play land.  James was STILL sick in bed, and everyone was starving.  I hadn't cooked anything (it had just been one of those days), and even if I had wanted to cook, it would have been interesting.  I needed to go to Wal-Hell for groceries.  Sadly, the only thing in my cupboard was a box of blueberry muffin mix and a bag of pretzel M&Ms.  SO...off to pay Ronald a visit.

I ordered our Happy Meals, then paid for the food while Cam and Lilly played "follow the leader" in front of the cash registers.  I picked up the tray and headed to the condiment station (do they call it that?) when suddenly I heard a SMACK!  A "newly-walking-baby-losing-his-balance-while-toddling-around-and-falling-and-slamming-his-face-into-the-tile" kind of SMACK!  It was followed by hysterical crying.  I turned--hands full of ketchup and napkins and soda cups--and saw Cam lying face-down on the floor.

I scooped up my bawling boy and was greeted by blood, blood, blood.  He had split his lip and it was already beginning to swell like a bad lip injection treatment!  As I wiped the blood from his mouth, I noticed two tiny white spots or flecks of something on his bottom lip.  I wondered what they were as I cleaned them off.

Then it hit me.

TOOTH!!  Pieces of tooth!!

At this point I could say this incident was "the straw that broke the camel's back."  Remember that proverbial shovel I mentioned?  It felt as if life had handed it to me.  I didn't know what to do.  Cam had broken his tooth, everyone was hungry, our warm, salty fries were getting cold.  I decided to stay and try to get through dinner.  I sat and cried over my cheeseburger in the middle of the McDonald's play land; young children gleefully screaming and running all around me.  The more Cam grinned at me with that hillbilly smile (please, no offense to the hillbillies), the more I would cry.

The next day--after phone calls to a mom friend for a pediatric dentist referral, the pediatrician's office, and the dentist's office--I had an appointment for Camren.  The office I took him to was so nice, and all the people working there were lovely...especially the dentist!  Imagine my delight to find that the dentist who would be repairing Cam's tooth was a total babe--dark brown eyes, great smile, and the prettiest, whitest teeth I have ever seen!  "Dr. Babe" took excellent care of my little man, and treated him with tenderness.  (He kept calling him "Bubba.")  He explained everything to me--the work that needed to be done and the best way to go about completing it.  He couldn't have been more kind or more sympathetic. "Dr. Babe" did a fantastic job on Cam's tooth.

After an exam and x-rays, two hours in the dentist's office, a lot of red-faced wailing (from Cam, not me), and a partial crown, Cam has a pearly white that resembles a Chiclet.

So when those hidden cameras reveal themselves, when the crew finally comes out of the bushes, Cam Man will be ready for his close-up.

Motherhood: Sometimes it's a real kick in the teeth!