Double Trouble at School

Jacob had a very busy day at school the other day. When I came to pick him up, nothing seemed amiss. But appearances, as they say, are deceiving.

He takes a backpack to school, though he doesn't have any school books. He's in Reception, which is a sort of kindergarten where they spend most of the day playing. Learning and living by a schedule is acquired through clever guidance by the teachers. But the children don't have homework and don't have any school books, as I say. So the backpack is more of a mobile mailbox, for sending information and items back and forth to school. There's a little notebook if we have any questions or comments we can send them in and the teacher can reply, or she can send us messages. Sometimes he's painted something or some other craft comes home. A weekly newsletter comes home on Thursdays telling us about next week's events at the school.

This day, his backpack had a plastic bag with his pants (that's his underwear to you American readers) and his trousers (that's his pants to you American readers). So naturally I asked him about it. He said that he was too slow going to the potty and had an accident. Luckily his clothes were just wet, so it didn't seem like much of a problem. I asked where he got the pants and trousers he was currently wearing. He wasn't sure. So we put them through the wash that night and sent them back to school the next day.

I was initially surprised that the teacher said nothing about it. But on further reflection, I imagine that it is not so uncommon that children wet themselves by accident at the school. Maybe she thought it was unremarkable, and so didn't remark on it.

The other surprise was when Jacob volunteered information. Usually he doesn't tell us much of anything about his day at school unless something really exciting happened, like the day they had PE in the big room and danced to the song "Life is a Highway" from the movie Cars. He loves the movie and knows the song quite well. But I digress. His volunteered information was in itself surprising--his tooth was loose! He showed me with his tongue. Sure enough, one of the front lower teeth could move back and forth. I even tried moving it very, very, VERY gently with my finger, just to make sure. It did wobble a bit.

We were already walking back to the car or else I would have asked the teacher some questions. I asked Jacob if he had fallen or hit his mouth. He said no. He had no bruises or any marks. He seemed pretty calm and just asked that we see a doctor or a dentist (who we had seen two weeks earlier, even though I just posted about it yesterday). I was still imagining all sort of horrible dental surgery or Jacob spending weeks or months or years with a missing tooth. He's only four years old, and teeth only fall out when your seven or nine, right? At least that was what I was thinking on the drive home. The kids in the back seat seemed so calm. I didn't know how they could do it.

Finally arriving home, I went inside and called up our dentist. I asked them a lot of questions. They thought it was just a normal case of a new tooth pushing out a baby tooth. I took some convincing. They recommended some over the counter medicine in case Jacob felt bad, but their main suggestion was that he should keep working it around until it came out. Jacob seemed fine with this and life went on as normal.

So we are on tooth watch. I will provide updates as they happen. If only I had a Twitter account!