Foaming at the Mouth

We have a 12th tooth. Top right, in front of the molar.

With this tooth, Grace now has almost all of her right teeth, and none on the left. It is kind of funny. Luckily, the general public cannot see the imbalance because I am sure that it is just one more thing that every senior citizen at the grocery store would want to talk to me about.

The arrival of the dozenth has been much more pleasant than it’s younger sister, #11, but with 12 we have instituted a whole new routine that isn’t going very well yet.

Tooth brushing.

It’s not problematic because Gracie is fighting it. Oh no. Just the opposite. She L-O-V-E-S it. To the point of not wanting to give up the toothbrush. Ever.

Grace has always been fascinated with tooth brushing. Even at weeks old, she was always fixated on the motion of Matt brushing his teeth. Whenever she is around, he bends over to show her how to make the little circles.

I know we should have been brushing her from birth. Everything you read says to use a little finger nub to brush and massage gums.

Are you kidding me? Really? Really?? Like I don’t have enough going on, I’m going to worry about brushing her gums??

Pediatric dentists say you should bring your kid in by the time their 1 for their first assessment. Normal people say 3. The normal people also have been saying though that you should be brushing baby teeth as soon as they come in.

OK, so we’re a little behind the eight ball on this one too, but give me a break. Better late than never, right?

For all the things and topics that people love to give advice to on, how come I have never heard one peep about tooth brushing?

This battle, our battle, is Gracie’s desire to brush her teeth until the end of time.

I putt a little dab of mixed berry flavored fluoride-free toddler toothpaste on her miniature brush and it begins.

- She smiles and lets me make little circles for about 3 seconds.
- Then she grabs the brush, sucks the toothpaste off and hands it back to me.
- I try and brush the back molars.
- She grabs the brush again and tries to make back and forth brushing motions while chomping on the bristles.
- I get the brush again and try for the other side.
- Grace takes control once more and dips the brush into the tub, picking up some bubbles on the way, and stuffs the brush back into her mouth.
- I am handed the brush and she smiles so I can make little circles on her front teeth for 3 more seconds.

And it goes like this for 15 minutes, or until the pry the brush out of her hand – wherein she realizes that I am taking her beloved toothbrush away and starts screaming – so I then try to distract her with the big, noisy Winnie-the-Pooh bubble blower that is stuck to the side of the tub.

It’s exhausting. It’s only been a week, but something has to change. I cannot do tub battle every night.

Maybe if I find a cute egg timer we can set up a system where she knows that she brushes for 5 minutes and then it is over. Hmmm. That might work. It also might come in handy for when she starts to decide that she DOESN’T want to brush her teeth anymore too.

#11 is Evil

Tooth #11 is here, and it had a really mean streak.

Its arrival has meant multiple screaming sessions in the middle of the night for the last week. Its arrival has meant that when Gracie does finally fall asleep in my arms after rocking her for 45 minutes, it is NOT OK to put her back in her crib. Its arrival has meant that there is just general all day crankiness in the house.

I am blaming the tooth, not Grace’s approach to the 1.5 year mark that I’ve heard terrible things about, on her sudden need to be clingy also.

We stayed home from work yesterday because there was an ice storm. Let’s be honest, I stayed home from work because I could. Sure the roads were crappy, but I would have been fine. I am from Chicago after all. I just didn’t want to deal, so we stayed home.

Big mistake.

She spent the majority of her day pulling on my pants, screaming to be picked up or screaming to be put down – then repeat.

Yesterday made me question my dedication to being a good parent. Yesterday, I wanted to stick Grace in the basement and take a long, LOUD bath with a HUGE glass of wine at 10 am.

Instead, I started medicating. Rounds of hippie, homeopathic, chamomile-herb teething drops and Tylenol. I have no idea which one worked, but it was the first time in forever that she’s slept through the night.

Lots of parent’s seem to not believe in such things – well the Tylenol part of it anyway. I on the other hand, figure if I would take it myself, why wouldn’t I give it to Grace? In fact, it is one more thing that I love about Dr. H. His philosophy is that you can’t do your job as a parent if your not sane, so do whatever your comfortable with to stay sane.

So far, this morning is all smiles and sunshine. If the clouds start to roll in, at least I have a few more hours before it becomes my problem again.

Ten.

During a hissyfit last night, I made a discovery.

Gracie has sprouted two more teeth, with an additional just days away from popping through the gums. (Normally she tries to bite me when I stick my finger in her mouth to explore for new teeth.)


We have all four front teeth on both top and bottom (eight total), and now the next two top right teeth have joined the party.


This brings the number up to ten. Ten teeth. And one is a molar. Hurray grinding!

OK kid, we are half way there! Only ten more to go!

What Happened to #7?

We went from 6 to 8. What the hell happened to #7?

We're talking about teeth.

Gracie's grin this evening has exposed two new arrivals in her mouth. They are barely though the gums, one on each side of her bottom two teeth. Her display of synchronized teething.

I thought we were pacing ourselves??

On the up side, this round of teething has been much more congenial as she has been sleeping through the night for the last week. Go figure.

Anyway, we welcome the new members of the family as they only will help in my quest to have Grace love all members of the green veggie and bean family. We have already made friends with peas and kidney beans.

Updates

I will write about the trip in the next day or so, but here are some updates I missed blogging about over the last week...

We have a 6th tooth. The sucker popped out to give us a much more cordial daughter while we were away from home. Now in the true nature of these things though, she is busy working on the 7th to help even out the bottom chompers.

Ok - Maybe this isn't the best photo, but she gets mad when you look in her mouth. She now has the two center bottom teeth (which don't look centered in the photo,) the two top center teeth and a tooth on each side up top. I think the next arrival will be bottom left.

Today gives us 2 full weeks of crawling. It is amazing how quickly she can move now. And how dirty I am discovering that my kitchen floor is. I hate cleaning, which is why we pay someone to come do it for us once a month, but I guess I am now deticated to sweeping / mopping weekly if not daily. Ugg.

Grace has also figured out how to go up the step between our family room and kitchen. Then insists on going back down it. Over and over. At least the wood floor on the 'down' portion of the activity has more give than the kitchen tile.

I guess I should have put her shorts back on before taking photos, huh?

Oh, and lets not forget, in true family fashion she is going straight for the wine rack. This morning she was pulling herself to standing position and then pulling bottles of wine off.

Guess we will just have to start drinking them faster.

5 and Counting

The 5th tooth has made an appearance. Right top big tooth.

Unfortunately, it is traveling companions are excessive drooling, temperature and vomiting.

It's a beautiful thing.

I guess we are going to the Doc's on Monday to make sure it is just indeed a heavy bout of teething and not something more.

Sick children and vacations do not mix well.

Careful What You Ask For

Restaurant Week – how I love thee.

I’ve been dreaming of the $20 3 course gourmet lunch I was supposed to have today for two weeks. When else can you justify going to over-hyped, over-priced celebrity restaurants?

I’ve been foiled though. By a teething 10 month old, my overly dedicated workaholic husband and frankly, myself.

In celebration of the bi-annual restaurant week price cuts and Matt’s last week at his downtown job, we made reservations for lunch.

(Oh, by the way, in case you hadn’t heard yet, Matt did get the super short commute-more money-less responsibility job he interviewed for a while back. He interviewed on a Wednesday and was informally offered the job that Friday. It didn’t become official though until two weeks ago. You know, those Human Resources folks have a lot going on with all the doughnut eating and water cooler talk. It takes a while to get these things co-ordinated.)

Anyway, we made these reservations with a semi-complicated plan to go along with them. I would be dropped off at work earlier than normal, take the shuttle bus downtown and walk 2 miles to the restaurant (my choice to help burn the decadent calories.) After, we would go back to Matt’s office, pick up the car, buy large amounts of Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joe's, drive back up to my work to pick up Grace and still be home before normal.

It was brilliant! How could the plan fail?

Well, the other side of her mouth – you know, the teeth I was anxious for to balance out her kisser – decided to do some movement last night. Maybe I am exaggerating, but I’m fairly certain she cried from 11pm-2am. Matt held her for a good portion of those hours.

We are all tired this morning. Well, Gracie seems fine, but did sleep in 45 minutes later than normal. Matt & I are tired. Exhausted. I refused to get out of bed. I had to take a picture this morning!

We slept in. Well, I slept in. Matt can never go back to sleep.

So now, we are running over an hour behind schedule. The amount of leave I need to take the afternoon off doubled and Matt realized that he needed more than 3 hours of time at the office.

Consider the afternoon canceled. I will pout all day and resent every bite of food eaten at lunch.

Next year. Next year is a long time away though. *Sniff*

Dinner for Four

The fourth tooth has arrived.

You can barely see it poking out of the other side of her top tooth in this picture.

Well that was Tuesday.

It is now Saturday and it is here demanding crunchy snacks.

I hope the two on the other side come down soon so she's not so lopsided though!