My nine-year-old son is the center of my universe. This is the story of his childhood as it unfolds. Please read the first post, "Why I started this blog," to know more.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

We have new teeth - a whole new row, actually!

I should have written about this almost a month back. Munchkin's best friend -- 8 year old -- had belatedly lost his first tooth and got a bonanza from the tooth fairy. That's when I decided to check if any of my own little brat's teeth had begun to get loose. And surprise, surprise: his two lower front teeth were loose. I lost track of the development when he fell ill - as did the rest of the family.

The day he went to school after that, my mother asked me if I'd seen his new teeth. New teeth? What new teeth? His front teeth are just beginning to get loose, I said. She gave me an old-fashioned look and summoned the brat to come over and open his mouth wide. And sure enough, around 2mm behind his lower front teeth, serrated edge of a wide tooth had just broken the surface of his gums. And boy was it wide! It's almost the size of both is front teeth. I had visions of him looking like Roger Rabbit or Bugs Bunny in a couple of months!

Two weeks later, I inspected the teeth again, and this time, there was a second tooth struggling to emerge. Only this one was at an angle to its partner. That meant crooked lower front teeth. Like my husband's. This time, I had visions of the zeroes on the bill when we'd have to get him braces to even out the dental drama.

I still can't figure out why the new teeth are emerging 2mm behind the front row. I have to keep checking whether he's brushed his teeth properly because he effectively has two rows of teeth, one behind the other. Weird...But hey, this is a weird kid: he never crawled when he should have. His leg would get stuck under his tummy and he'd call for assistance to get himself disentangled.

Plus, he learnt to walk on his own - without any support - when he was 10.5 months old. And even then he couldn't stand up on his own to begin walking. That's when he started to crawl: because he could get to a wall and use the support to stand himself up and then walk. A couple of months later, he managed to stand up on his own one day, while building a tower of stacking blocks. And promptly looked around to see if his achievement had been noted. It had...Mommy was crying and laughing at the same time. Satisfied, he plonked the final block on the top of the tower and fell back on his bottom with a thud and beamed!

Now, excuse me while I go start the tooth fairy fund. We live in inflationary times, you know.



1 comment:

Liz said...

Dont worry - Joey's bottom front teeth came in at least a half inch behind his teeth, and they worked their way forward eventually!