The one where I’m contemplating death and end up writing about teeth . . .

It’s 2:30 am and I’m wide awake, having just had the sweetest little night-time visit from our angelic girl.  It looks like we’ve got another chapter of teething on our hands — heaven help us!  Have I mentioned that she cut FOUR teeth in the month after we moved to California?  She really tries to be good-natured about it, but it is quite a disturbance to her usual temperament and sleep schedule.  Of course, that’s not surprising in light of the pediatric dentist’s assessment of her teeth issues.  I think the technical term he used was “jacked up.”  Yeah, that was it.  Apparently, that’s what comes of HUGE adult-size teeth trying to fit in an itty-bitty baby mouth — her bottom teeth are right on top of each other and crooked as all get-out.

Although this post was going to be about me and my middle-of-the-night musings, as long as I’m on the subject I might as well give the brief history of Addison’s teeth.  It’s for posterity.  I’ve already mentioned on here that she got her two top front teeth when she about 12 months old.  Definitely a late teether, but so was I.  Those two teeth, they were dillies . . . most people likened them to rabbit teeth.  Here’s some pics from February/March I never posted:

First teeth coming in

In their full glory

After that she got one bottom front tooth, but it was very clear there was something problematic going on because it was super crooked and seemed to be almost sideways, meaning that she was around 14 months old and could barely chew anything.  If you’re not well-versed in baby-teeth order of arrival (we’re definitely not, thus Google and Wikipedia have been consulted on multiple occasions), this is already a slightly unusual pattern since most kids get their bottom front teeth first.  What happened next was decidedly unusual: she got all her molars.  This was definitely good news because she could finally chew a bit.  Soon she also got her top lateral incisors.  But after a couple of months with no visible tooth action on the bottom and a lot of apparent pain and crankiness, we finally took her to the dentist in July (at 17 months) to make sure that there was nothing majorly wrong.  (By the way, if you’re in the Provo/Orem area, Orem Pediatric Dentistry was awesome!  No wait, tons of toys and fun stuff, videos on the ceiling to keep them occupied while in the chair, and super professional.)  It was very obvious from the x-rays that while her top teeth were quite large, they were basically normal and straight.  But the bottom, yikes!  The dentist didn’t shudder or anything, but he immediately said, “I can definitely see why you’d be concerned.”

In any event, he just wanted us to wait it out and see how things went by the time she turned two.  But he assured us that teeth pulling and orthodontia were likely in our future.  About the time we were moving, she finally got her second bottom front tooth, and since then they’ve come on like gangbusters.  I remember reading a parents’ discussion board about teething while I was pregnant and a lot of the parents were saying that teething is not a big deal and our culture makes more of it than is warranted.  I was resolved that I would neither exaggerate the effect of teething nor attribute every temperamental moment to it.  But it turns out we’ve got a hardcore teether on our hands.

No doubt this particular post is only of interest to a select few (grandmothers?) but it’s the sort of thing I wish I knew more about myself as a child so I’m willing to bore everyone else to tears to record it.  I kind of hijacked my own blog post, but it was likely going to be long and rambling about death and facing our own and our family members’ mortality, so maybe it’s better this way . . .

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