Snaggle-toothed!!

This past weekend Eli was constantly showing us his loose tooth. He was crazy excited that he could wiggle it back and forth with his tongue :) We found out back in November that it was just barely loose when I took the kids for their dental checkups. The dentist didn't think he'd lose it before Christmas, but it wouldn't be too terribly long. I told Eli he would probably be snaggle-toothed for his pictures with Maggie. He thought that was funny. I remember wanting him to lose his top teeth a while back because Noah's came in in such an odd order. I thought it would make for funny pictures if both he and Noah were missing their two front teeth! Well, it didn't happen, but I guess it very well still could with Maggie. I told Eli before I left for work Sunday night that he would lose his first tooth in February. Not too long after I left, Brian called me and said, "well, your prediction was wrong." I wasn't following him, but he then said Eli had lost his tooth when he bit into his grilled cheese sandwich at dinner. He is getting used to the weird feeling of having a hole in his mouth.

Now we get to look forward to "buttons." Apparently, Eli has a problem with tongue thrusting...so much so that his bite is no longer aligned. With a normal bite, the top teeth should come down in front of the bottom teeth. Eli's top and bottom sets meet together. Therefore, the dentist seems to think the best course of action is buttons." As the adult teeth come in they'll place some type of metal button on the back side of those bottom teeth and they somehow train the tongue not to thrust against the new adult teeth which should result in nicely aligned permanent teeth. The way it was described to me was the tongue is a muscle and muscle isn't fond of touching metal. So, we now have that interesting journey ahead of us.

Check out my tooth!
...and the new hole in my mouth!

Brian got the priviledge of being the tooth fairy for the first time. I have to admit I was a bit jealous. I was going into work so I wouldn't be there to do it. He probably thought I was a crazy person telling him to take pictures of his tooth, his mouth, him checking underneath his pillow and the such. But those pictures were my only way of experiencing it. Kinda sad, but as I thought about it, I know over the years he has missed many firsts and I've been there for most, if not all of them since I get to stay at home with our little ones during the week. I'm glad he got to experience a "first" and get the joy of carrying on the tradition of "tooth fairy." I told him he better leave that boy some bills...he thought I was crazy as a quarter was good enough for us back in the day, but he did leave $3 and Eli was pretty excited the next morning!