Tag Archives: teeth

New Toothbrush?

I have always struggled with remembering when it is you are supposed to get a new toothbrush. I’m sure there is a rule of thumb, I’m just unclear what it is.

Once a month?

Every six months?

When the bristles squish out?

I’m sure there are “rules” about this, but my squeamishness of all things tooth related makes me unwilling to google it. (Sort of like how someone with arachnophobia would be unwilling to google “Black Widow” no matter how much they love their Marvel universe). I suspect it doesn’t matter.  In our house a toothbrush would never make it that long anyway.

Because a new toothbrush is probably warranted when they fall in the garbage.

Or when you lose it.

Or when you forget to pack one on vacation.

Or when a dog chews on it.

Or when the kids use it to scrub the sink and mirrors.

But one thing I know for certain.

When Jane explains to me that she had to use her toothbrush to push the used toilet paper off the seat into the toilet because otherwise her hand would get dirty. Then it is, for sure, time for a new toothbrush.

This has nothing to do with toothbrushes of any age.

This has nothing to do with toothbrushes of any age. Cassie is just cuter than any toothbrush I’ve encountered.

Afterwards, when the horror had left my face, and I was done explaining why that was a bad idea as well as why she no longer had a toothbrush.  I thought about the matter of fact way she used her toothbrush to do her dirty work while I was watching and wondered what else I hadn’t seen…

New toothbrushes – all around!

 

Yum! Yum!

In the middle of lunch today Ivy stood up on her chair, opened her eyes as wide as they would go, smiled her biggest smile, and threw her arms up and down expressively as she said:

“Mom! Clara is learning to talk!!! She said: ‘Yum! Yum!’!”

The only thing better than watching Clara grow is seeing Ivy’s joy in it.

In addition to saying “yum, yum”  she and Ivy went sledding by themselves today.

They lasted about ten minutes and nobody ran into anything.

The morning was a success.

Until Clara fell and chipped her tooth, that sort of put a damper on the fun.

The last toothy grin!

Alien Trouble

I had trouble, Clara was screaming, and screaming, and screaming.  My friend was due to show up any minute to babysit, John would be home shortly and we were all set for our belated anniversary date.   As the screaming continued with no signs of stopping I started worrying that not only was my evening was in jeopardy but that something was seriously wrong with my kid. As I tried to figure out what the cause of the screaming was I debated with myself:

Do I stay home?

Do we delay leaving until she’s in bed?

Will I feel horribly guilty for leaving a completely upset girl with my friend?

If I leave will I just be grateful that I can say goodbye and leave all the noise behind?

If I am grateful does that make me a horrible mother?

Did I accidentally feed her dairy products?

Does she have a fever?

Am I actually stabbing hot needles into her and I don’t know it?

Have the ten million falls she has taken in the last week as she started walking damaged her brain and now all she can do is scream?

Then during a good scream I looked in her mouth, there I discovered two gigantic aliens posing as molars pushing through Clara’s gums. They must have been aliens, teeth that large, in such a little mouth that would be pure craziness.  Unfortunately my alien banishing tactics are nonexistent so I thought I’d treat it like teething.

Teething I know how to deal with (thank you Ivy for your super early, super cranky teething).  We froze some teethers (I know frostbite, whatever, fridge temp is not cold enough), dug out some aquarium tubing to chew on, pulled out the ibuprofen,and made a call to John to bring home some teething gel. A half hour later drugs had kicked in, Clara was happily walking around the house with her chunks of tubing and John and I left guilt free on our date.

After a bit of a rough start at sporting clays when John’s gun jammed on his first shot things went great.  John was unable to fix his gun, which forced him to use my gun, which effectively handicapped him enough that I almost beat him. We finished up our date night with dinner out and a trip to the grocery store (wild and crazy I know) and came home to two sleeping girls and one friend that still seems to like both us and our kids.

Thank goodness it was only alien trouble!