Toothy Tales

Sadie lost another tooth yesterday!

My kids don't hesitate to come to me to have their teeth pulled.  My dad taught me in the fine art of tooth-pulling.  Always use a kleenex-type apparatus so you don't lose your grip on the tooth.  And twist the tooth instead of pulling it.  Bada-bing, bada boom.  I'm also the Family Get the Sliver Outer.  Micah doesn't even cry when I have to get a sliver out of his hand or foot.  I am the consummate professional.

We took Dylan in to the orthodontist last week, just for a consultation.  His teeth look like that one pool-table implement.  I remember it from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  It looks like a bunch of crooked white teeth, attached to a pool stick (I know that's not what you call it, but I'm seriously drawing a blank here).  Tom and Jerry were up to their usual fighting shenanigans, and somehow, this thing that looks like crooked, buck white teeth attached to a pool stick got shoved into Tom's stomach, and the teeth were by his mouth.  I believe the pool stick was shoved through his stomach and to the tip of his tail.  And as he lay there in a daze on the pool table, buck-toothed pool-playing implement in his mouth, the sound effect guy goes "Duhhhhhhh."

Dylan's top four teeth look just like those Duhhhhh teeth in Tom and Jerry.  It's pretty bad.

So we took him in to see if we could get braces on just his top front four and top bottom four, and it's $2000.  Yikes.  Bikes.  So we basically said, "Okay, if by some miracle we get more money coming in each month, we'll call you!  Don't call us!  We'll call you!"  So expensive.  But so important.  I think having a crooked or buck-toothed smile can be really debilitating to a person.  So we'll try to figure something out.

Poor kid. He was convinced that were going to put braces on that day.  And he was soooo excited about it.

Have you ever read Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls?  Probably in my top five favorite books that I've ever read.  For reals.  I've read it twice, and I NEVER do that.  Anyways, it's a memoir, and poor little Jeannette had buck teeth.  Her family was incredibly, incredibly poor, and she was tired of having buck teeth, so this girl actually got a wire hanger, cut it off, shaped it so that it would press against her teeth at night, and got some rubber bands to attach to each end.  Then she attached the rubber bands in some way to a big, soft maxi pad that fit behind her neck.  That is how she straightened her teeth.  With a hanger and a maxi pad.  She basically made her own headgear.  Crazy.  I guess sometimes desperation is the father of invention, right?