Toothy Update

We've been in a "gain some, lose some" tooth mode lately. Here's what's happening.

Luke: He is down 2 as of today. He got his lower 2 incisors pulled to help make some room in his bottom jaw. The lady asked me if I wanted the laughing gas for him when she called him back, but I said no. I knew it was extra ($50), and I had already told him to expect to be numbed in the mouth. Plus, I had a zillion baby teeth pulled as a kid, with no laughing gas in sight, and I did fine (plus I walked home 8 miles in the snow uphill . . .). He was a little nervous, but he did just fine. Whew! Now he is dealing with the 2 big holes in his mouth. In a related note, he has adjusted to his expander just fine, although it is a constant battle to get the food out of the top of it. The feeling of having food stuck up there drives him crazy.

Grace: She is up an amazing 5! When we were in Ohio, she was drooling like a faucet, her nose was runny, and she was pooping all the time and had a terrible diaper rash. This is how my kids teeth, so I was expecting a tooth. Specifically, I was expecting the fourth bottom tooth in the front, since she had all 4 up top, and a lop-sided 3 on the bottom. But it never came in and never even looked like it was going to come in. Eventually she stopped being drooly, snotty, and poopy, her rash went away, and I stopped looking for that tooth. Two Fridays ago I was playing around with her on her back. I stuck my finger in her mouth and ran my fingers all around her gums. To my surprise, I found 2 top molars fully in! Obviously this was what she was working so hard on in Ohio! Her bottom molars were about to come through, and have since done so, and today I noticed that--hey!--that one bottom front tooth is through too. So Grace has been a busy girl lately. No wonder she had gone back to taking both a morning and an afternoon nap!

No one else has had any tooth issues, although Anna did have some mysterious virus Sunday. She woke up at 3:00 A.M. running a fever. I gave her some motrin, and she went back to sleep, but when she woke up at 8:30, she was just as hot as ever. I gave her some more motrin, and Bob stayed home from church with her. She was still running a little fever when we got home from church at 1:00, so I gave her some tylenol, and then some more motrin at 3:00. This seemed to do the trick, finally getting the fever down. She took a good afternoon nap and perked up in the evening. She slept fine last night, and she seems fine today, so it was just a 24 hour thing I guess. Hopefully no one else will get it. My parents are here to take Caleb and Jonathan back to Ohio for 10 days on Wednesday, and we don't want any of them to be sick for that!