Snaggle-Toothed Toddler

See this quirky sunny smile?

Memorize it. This is the last handful of pictures we have of it.

The very last pic is here:

Moments after Uncle Nick took out his cell phone to capture this sweet good-bye wave (after the sweetest of sweet mornings with her, no seriously! delightful!)... Anneliese took a tumble and smashed her face on that very window bench.

YES SHE IS OKAY.

There was lots of blood. There were even more tears. There was a washing machine full of bloody-slobber soaked burp cloths. There was a mad hunt for a knocked-out tooth that never surfaced. There are bruised cheeks and a swollen lip and nose, and there is pain.

BUT SHE IS OKAY. I know that's what's important.

Yet nagging just below the relief that it's not much much worse, and the mommy guilt (bloody accident on my watch!), there's this (yes, shallow) sadness that her baby smile is... gone. I mean, different. Her whole look is different. See?

The little grin we have loved for almost three years is just, done. Over in a second. We'll now look at pictures and instantly be able to tell oh that was before she fell. Her baby face. Or something. I don't know. I know it's terribly shallow but I'm sad. It's a bizarre thing to mourn but I'm mourning it just the same.

Anyway, UPDATE ON THE TOOTH. So after a weekend dental visit and an x-ray, it turns out that the "knocked out" tooth isn't actually missing. It's...

(brace yourself, you will cringe)

... still up there. Jammed up into her gum/jaw. (!!) Um, YEAH. Want to see a gross pic of it? Of course you do.

(Look away, people with Weird Teeth Heebie Jeebie Issues.)

(You can see this didn't deter her from eating pizza for dinner. Yes, Daddy cut it up first.)

And the jam is directly into the developing permanent tooth right above it, so the extent of that damage will be a fun surprise to learn about when she's seven. Yay.

The hope is that as the swelling subsides, the tooth will sort of... work its way down? Be possible to re-fuse to the.. jaw? Something? Basically it might work itself out, with some coaxing from the dentist, over a period of several weeks and several follow-up appointments.  If not, then surgical extraction is in her future.

Either way, it's time to embrace a new level of quirk for this sunny grin.

If you're into tooth praying, pray for this thing to work its way out on its own, and avoid surgery. And for comfort for Anneliese's poor little sore mouth, especially when she's horizontal (trying to sleep) which seems to make it worse. Thank you, friends.