It's All About Teeth Around Here

I feel like my life is consumed with teeth issues. When will Hannah finally pull that tooth, will Ben keep his tooth, I think Jacob has a tooth coming in..... Basically, those are the conversations that Jared and I have had for the past few weeks, but at last there is an end in sight! After weeks and weeks of watching Hannah's front tooth hang crooked in her mouth, wobbling as she talks, jutting out when she smiled, it finally fell out the day after Christmas. She refused to help it along in any way, which was weird because the first three teeth she lost she was doing every thing she could to make them come out, even letting Jared tie a string around the tooth, attaching the string to the doorknob and slamming the door shut! Here is a picture of her new, beautiful smile!


Benjamin's stint came off by itself a few days ago. We aren't sure where or exactly when he lost it since he either didn't notice it fell out or decided not to tell us. The stint was already starting to separate from the adhesive on his teeth so it wasn't a surprise that it was gone. We kept waiting to see if his tooth would fall out, but it stayed in, though he has randomly complained about his teeth hurting. Today we took him to the dentist to get his teeth examined and we received a good report. The dentist said that his gums and teeth look very good considering the trauma. The gums have closed around his tooth and are holding it in place, though the dentist said that a hard enough hit to the mouth would surely knock it out. The tooth beside the broken one, which suffered a lot of trauma, has turned grayish/black, but will probably improve in color somewhat over the next few months. The dentist tried polishing off the adhesive that was still on his tooth, but Benjamin would only let him work on it for a little while so we will have follow-up visits for more polishing. Here is a picture that shows how well he has healed.


Poor Jacob is working on his latest tooth. This one is proving to be very painful for him. Periodically, he breaks down in tears because it hurts so bad. Here is a recent picture of him, though this picture is from a few weeks ago and you can't see his teeth. Since he started walking I can't get him to stay still long enough for a decent picture.


And even though Machaela isn't having teeth issues I couldn't post a picture of the other three and leave her out!