Split lips and lost stitches

Well, yesterday was an exciting day at the Libutti house... our big event of the day was going to be signing up Michaela for swimming lessons, but at about 10am, Jenna smashed her face into our coffee table and that changed all of our plans.
She split her bottom lip right on her lip line and bit into the top of her bottom lip. It started bleeding right away, which freaked out Michaela, who started shrieking, "There's blood everywhere... I'm going to call Gammie!" While I was trying to clean up and calm down Jenna, Michaela got my mom on the phone and told her that "blood is everywhere!" So I started yelling so my mom could hear, "Everything is okay! There is not blood everywhere. We're okay!" Things started to settle down, the bleeded abated, and I was able to see that we should have the doctor take a look at it. We went to her pediatrician, waited an hour, and when he saw it thought we should bring her to a plastic surgeon. We got an appointment for 1pm at the plastic surgeon's office, stopped home for a quick sandwhich and to get Michaela on the bus, and then we were off. We waited at the plastic surgeons for almost 2 hours and then Jenna got her first stitches- two on the top of the lip and one on the lower bottom lip. She SCREAMED when they were going in, as you can imagine, and Dan and I both had to look away. She immediately started playing with them and sucking on her bottom lip. Dan went back to work and I stopped at the grocery store. By the time we got in the checkout line- not ten minutes after we left the surgeon's office- I looked at Jenna's mouth and she had eaten the two stiches in her lip off. So of course I called the surgeon's office and they said not to worry about it. Jenna seemed fine- she ate well, drank well, and generally seemed relieved that those annoying stiches were out!
Later that night I gave the girls their bath and while I was drying Jenna off, I looked at her face and the last stitch had come untied- it was just string coming out of her face. So I pulled that one out, too. After all that anxiety and waiting all day for doctors, as well as $40 in co-pays, we had nothing to show for it except the same split lip we started with!
Amazingly, she started healing so quickly that it is really not open anymore and is barely noticeable. Michaela did almost the exact same thing when she was a bit older and has a tiny, tiny scar on her lip so Dan and I were joking that the girls have matching beauty marks now! I think splitting your lip open is a rite of passage of sorts... it seems that every kid has done it at some time or another.
So today is another day and we are going to try again to sign up Michaela for swimming lessons!