Fun day at the dentist

How do you spell fun? Ask Matthew, and he'll say it's D-E-N-T-I-S-T (if he could spell, that is). They have prizes. Plus, they tickle you.

While not everyone would agree with him, we did have a family fun extravaganza at our dentist yesterday. Well, except for Todd, who has to go to military dentists. Mom had a few fillings replaced (fun!), and the kids all had cleanings. First up, Matthew. He giggled through a lot of it, tried to press every button he could everywhere, and was thoroughly impressed with the garbage can that you stepped on and it sprang open. He has no cavities and no other dental work required. Sadly, that was the only one we could say that about.

Allison sucks her thumb. Because of this, and if we don't do anything to reverse what it does to her mouth, she is starting to look like a beaver. She needs to get some kind of contraption put in her mouth that either cuts off her thumb, gives her a shock-collar jolt of electricity very time she tries to suck her thumb, or something that just makes it impossible to do it at all. I can see dollar signs floating in the air already...OH, and she had 2 little cavities . Those are the first for any of them ever.

So, on to Amanda. Amanda, it turns out, is missing a wisdom tooth. Yeah! We save money (eventually). Ohh, but she's also missing a molar (she has the premolar, but nothing under it). Hmmmm....that's not great, but okay we can deal with it. OHHH, and another her permanent molars may be pushing the permanent one next to it out. That is not good. But, she has no cavities. That is good news. She will be having an Oral surgeon consult if the molar doesn't self-adjust. Ohh, and she will have to be careful of the baby molar forever.....Cha-ching.....

And then there's Julia. Julia has no cavities and everything else is good. Ohh, wait, she has impacted canines. This means there is no room for them to come down - so they are sort of just hanging out up above all the other teeth waiting to do something bad. So, that is a definite consult to ortho AND an oral surgeon. Apparently, you have to move teeth out of the way, and then (and I'm not making this up) put chains on the canines and slowly pull them down. Huh? Yeah, that's what I said. Cha-ching, cha-ching.


Sighh.....I guess it could be a lot worse. It was probably our most interesting day at the dentist, but hopefully we won't have any more surprises in the future!

Sad Timber Ridge News

Friday night, one of the first grade teachers at our elementary school lost her fiance in a horrible car accident. They were set to be married on July 4th. Keep these families in your thoughts and prayers. http://www.ajc.com/cobb/content/metro/cobb/stories/2009/05/24/chapman_teacher_death.html


Happy Memorial Day to all our vets and soldiers (and their families) sacrificing to serve and protect our freedoms and way of life.

Yet another lesson

It's been a few months since we had a lesson. It's, of course, something about Matthew. It's always about Matthew. Even with Strep throat, he's keeping us on our toes.

Lesson #433: Don't buy blankets with tassels when you have a boy (who has access to scissors) who doesn't care for tassels.

We have (had) a blue blanket that had some stringy "tassels" (for lack of a better term) on the ends. Matthew doesn't seem to like them. We don't know why. If we asked why, he'd probably say, "I don't know." or just respond with something totally unrelated in order to get us to stop asking him about it (example: "Look, my pants have pooh on them. Winnie the Pooh.") So, Todd goes upstairs for something and comes upon a scene of destruction. Matthew was sitting with the blanket. He had a nice little pair of red scissors. He was meticulously trimming off the tassels and putting them in a pile. He brought the pile downstairs to show me, as if I would give him some kind of "detasseling" award. He was actually quite proud of himself. Sigh....

In other news, we have a new way of getting Matthew to take medicine. For those of you who haven't ever had the pleasure of watching us try and give Matthew medicine, it's sort of like trying to feed olives to Todd or peanut butter to Kelly. There's crying, kicking and screaming, objects are thrown, and it usually ends with us pinning him on the ground and just shooting it down his throat (and he will still usually manage to spit it back out to cover both of us and the walls 10 feet behind us). So, we did the old way once. And, that was enough. So, the next dose we sat him down and told him he would take it. No compromise. He wanted orange juice. No problem. I said we'd give him chocolate when he was done. We've tried this before, but this time it worked. So, he has a little 5 ml "syringe" that he uses to take the medicine. It takes about 10 minutes, with him sipping juice in between each 1/4-1/2 ml dose he gives himself. It's a good thing he almost never gets sick enough to need medicine.