Westley's Crash

On Saturday May 19th, it was supposed to be "National Take Your Kids to the Park and Leave Them There" Day. Explanation here: I am enthusiastic about a movement called "Free Range Kids" which is all about letting your kids have some reasonable freedom that is age appropriate and allowing them to develop some independence. On that day, I decided to let the three older boys ride their bikes to a nearby park, which is only about two blocks away, but not real blocks because they have to cut through the apartment complex on the bike path through there in order to get to it from our house. So I sent them over on their bikes and then I got Eliza and Jonah ready to go and went over with them, Eliza on her bike with training wheels and Jonah in the bike trailer with me pulling. Corey was working, so he didn't get to come with us. The plan was to play for a little while at the park and then head home after about 30 minutes to have lunch.

The park has a bike path that goes around it and since it is a hilly park, there are sections of bike path that is uphill and a few that are downhill. My boys (and I admit, I like it also) like to go up to the top and then cruise as fast as they can down the hills. On this day, Westley had gone to one of the crests and was starting his downhill cruise when his foot slipped from his pedal and he went crashing down at the bottom of the hill. He mostly got scraped up pretty badly--both knees, one elbow, and his face. But the worst part of his injury was hitting his face, I think on his bike handlebars, right in the old kisser. He broke a tooth and dislocated another. Unfortunately, the teeth that he damaged were permanent teeth.

I spent the rest of the day Saturday carting the kids to stay at my cousin's house while I took Westley to the Urgent Care to take a closer look at his damaged knees and elbow and make sure no stitches were required, and to the dentist to fix his broken tooth and repair the dislocated one. We were lucky that he didn't need a root canal on the broken tooth (yet) but he had to have the dislocated tooth cemented to the tooth next to it (the broken tooth). This was two days after he saw the orthodontist who said his teeth were coming in beautifully. Now, though, he has to see the orthodontist again because of that right front tooth that got moved out of place. I think everything will turn out okay and I'm sure he's not the first kid ever to deal with a broken tooth!

He was pretty miserable right after the crash.  This is in the car right as we got to my cousin's house to drop off the other kids.

This is as we were leaving my cousin's house to go to Urgent Care.  You can see his broken tooth there in front.

At the Urgent Care after he was all patched up.  For the first few days, he had a hard time getting around because of the injury to his left knee, which was worse than his right knee.

This is the picture of his mouth that I texted to the dentist right after it happened.  

Waiting while his scrapes are being numbed before the nurse cleaned them out.

Scraped up face