More than my daily dose.....

As if my own kids and their daily dose of torturous escapades are not enough, today I got a second helping from my nephew Jonah. My sister and I decided to take our kids to a wading pool this afternoon to play, as it was a near-perfect summer day. The wading pool we typically go to is not just any run-of-the-mill wading pool. It is a very nice fenced-in zero-depth wading pool full of fountains. Today, it seemed particularly crowded for a weekday afternoon. However, the kids jumped in the water full of energy and excitement. Soon after we arrived, my sister decided to take a little trip to the restroom to put on the bathing suit she had brought with her, but had not intended to wear. I think the combination of hot sun, the cool water, and my nagging forced her to re-think that decision. She was gone for all of five little measly minutes. However, as anyone who has spent any time at all around children knows, it typically takes less than one minute for all hell to break loose. As a matter of fact, my children have clocked in at a cool 6 seconds before. As soon as my sister disappeared into the restroom, I looked up to see my nephew running toward me screaming and crying. I love my nephew dearly, but as anyone who has met him knows, Jonah is not exactly quiet when wronged or injured. In this instance, he thought he was both, so he was rather loudly vocalizing his anguish. There was blood coming from his mouth and dripping down his chin. I was immediately hit with a rush of adrenaline and jumped up to meet him, convinced that he was near death's door. He screeched, barely coherently, "Matthew yanked my tooth out! Matthew yanked my tooth out!" My six-year-old cousin Matthew had come to the pool with us. Apparently, the boys had been roughhousing in the pool...as our boys typically do...and Jonah's loose tooth had been knocked out. Somewhere near the spot where the fountains were raining down a spray of water, Jonah's tooth had been dislodged and sank to the bottom of the pool. I immediately tried to hush him. There was no need for the other parents at the pool to get wind of the fact that there was a floating bloody tooth in the pool. I quickly wiped the blood from his chin and went about the task of convincing him that it was a accident and that Matthew was, indeed, NOT Rocky Balboa and had NOT intentionally knocked out his front tooth. Once I had sufficiently (somewhat) convinced him of this, I made him show me exactly where he had been standing when the tooth was knocked out of his mouth. Of course, they were right under the spray of the fountain. I made the three older boys, all goggled and snorkled up, dive to the bottom of the pool...which was maybe two and a half feet deep at that spot....to search for the tooth. We searched for some time, with the boys alternating exclamations of, "I felt something!" before I finally gave up and returned to my seat at the side of the pool. I hoped that no one realized exactly what we were searching for. I told the boys to go back in the water and play, and assuaged myself by repeating the phrase, "It probably just got sucked into the pool's filter." As I was sitting there wondering what in the hell was taking my sister so long to put on her bathing suit, I looked up to see Lucas and Jonah opening the gate to the pool area and trotting out. Immediately, I jumped up and yelled their names. There is nothing that I love more than yelling my child's name across a crowded pool. All eyes turned to look at the crazy lady yelling, "Get back in here!"at her kids. Lucas and Jonah froze in mid-step and watched in terror as I stalked toward them. I grabbed them and explained in no uncertain terms that they do NOT leave the pool area without my sister or I with them. They are well aware of this rule, but Jonah wanted to go looking for his mom to tell her about his tooth. I herded them back toward the water and sat down to resume my impatient staring at the women's restroom door. Finally, my sister emerged and re-joined our exciting little group. Jonah informed her of his unfortunate tooth debacle. She made him go back into the water to look for the tooth again. It was an exercise in futility, of course, since I was completely convinced that the tooth had already left the pool by that point and was well on it's way to the emergency room embedded in the tender little foot of a poor, innocent, young child.

Hopefully, the Tooth Fairy is an understanding celestial being.