Fri 20th Apr 2018

Woke this morning with itchy eyes that the more I rubbed them (half asleep and not really thinking) the more they stung so when Erika rolled away back to sleep I gave in and got up as there was only an hour before the wake-up alarm was due to go off.

So that’s what it’s like before the sun hits the room! I was up before the sun had risen enough to break over the top of the woodland and flood the living room with sunshine. Tiger was waiting for me this morning so once I’d dealt with coffee and dough and whatnot I went out to drink my coffee with her.

Steve woke Charley up and got him to get dressed. Charley was not impressed, declaring it too early and that he wanted his teeth to fall out by themselves. We waited in the sunshine for the bus, played I-spy, waved at Daddy and Ben and Erika, chatted, and ended up sitting by the little fountain as we’d got there a little early. Until I realised I’d left Charley’s sun-lolly drink at home (to mix the sedative medicine in) and we had to run through a shop to pick up his favourite capri-sun instead!

He was nervous, and quiet, but he drank the sedative and we went off to wait for it to kick in. It was barely 10 minutes before he was almost unable to hold his head up by himself and it was about 50/50 funny/not funny any more, it was super fast acting and as I’d stupidly decided to sit on the floor with him I was fast finding myself stuck underneath an increasingly heavy kid.

I have a fairly severe dental phobia. It’s not necessarily the dental work I have issues with, it’s the needles in my face thing mainly, but I have deep-rooted issues which aren’t really dealt with. Still. Charley wanted his mummy with him, so mummy sucked it up. We’d already been through this once last year and it was mostly fine except for not letting the sedative work for long enough before starting so he remembers too much of it still; so at least the sedative was definitely working this time so what could go wrong?! Well the tooth could go wrong, that’s what. It broke on the way out, so the dentist had to try to remove the roots individually. I do not know how I got through that. Charley broke down, we still had to go for an x-ray which he aced – he knows the drill and can do it even under sedation, he’s flippin amazing – and when we got back to the dentist’s chair he tried so hard to let them get the last piece of tooth out but couldn’t and begged them to stop. So they did. It might come out by itself, pushed out by the body, it might get pushed out when his adult tooth starts moving. But for now it’s still in there.

Now I had a very upset, emotional, heavy, strong, kid to get home. Even with a taxi, it was hard work. He kept trying to run off while we waited at the clinic, and falling over because he was so unbalanced. But he refused to let me help. He was so frustrated that his body wasn’t behaving.

We got home, I handed care over to Steve, and poured myself a whisky (and a coffee) because Mama with severe dental phobia plus Charley with proper bolshy (and emotional) post-sedative attitude and Daddy doing what he does extremely well looking after bolshy post-sedative patients. It’s awful watching Charley knowing that’s what I’m like, it was proper bloody traumatic watching him have his tooth pulled and then there was none of this resting and recuperating like the dentist said he ought to do, no, instead he was pushing through the sedative and “practising running” which is basically very very barely controlled falling and within minutes his face was covered in mud with a graze on his forehead and he kept bursting into tears – but he’ll forget all of this and I won’t.

Eventually he wore himself out, drunkenly wagging his finger in Steve’s face telling him it was all his fault for waking him up so early, and curled up on the sofa with me. At some point he stopped snuggling up to me and I took myself off to bed for a nap, having already acknowledged (to myself) that three hours sleep is not enough and yes getting up early (because I was awake and couldn’t sleep) was lovely and all that but not sustainable.

The sedative had worn off by the time I resurfaced, and Steve and Charley had decided once I was awake again that they would go into town together to the toyshop to spend Charley’s pocket money. I have a suspicion that Charley will have more gaps in his memory than he realises, and I’m not actually sure he’ll particularly remember going into town so we may have to write off that pocket money spend… Still, they managed, and came back with a bow and arrow set and a technic lego stunt car set which Steve had to build so that Charley could give it to Ben. He does the randomest acts of kindness towards his brother.

Thankfully Erika napped after I woke up, so I got to play Minecraft with Ben until Steve and Charley got home, then I took myself off down the garden to see about gathering some bramble vines to try to make a basket.

Back outside the house, Tiger demanded I put my tools down because apparently it was snuggling time. Charley appeared to say hello to Tiger, and then Erika woke and decided it was also snuggle time.

Tiger decided kids or no kids it was still snuggle time. Erika and Charley both managed to say hello to Tiger!