The tale of a tooth

Teeth have played a pretty big part in our lives for the past 6 years, as is most likely the case for anyone with small children. Practically from the moment our babies are born there is a wise, older friend of the family (most likely female) who will tell us they are teething! Unexplained crying - teething. Fist in the mouth - teething. Unsettled at night - teething. Generally grumpy - teething. If this was indeed the truth then Conor should have an extraordinary number of teeth by now as he can display 3 out of those 4 on any given day!

But there is no doubt that the arrival of the first tooth is much anticipated by all, and many conversations will take place on the age your child was when this milestone was achieved. This is the only photograph I can find of Patrick that clearly shows his first baby teeth. (I know, what a chubster! And this was in the pre-dslr days and probably even has some red eye if you look closely enough!)

 

Fast forward five and a half years and a whole new conversation is occurring. The one he starts every day - "When is my wobbly tooth going to fall out?" This is a question we have heard for months. At first, I must confess, I was quite sad at the prospect of my baby losing a tooth, especially after all the hard work and sleepless nights we put in making sure it arrived with as little trauma and pain as possible. And now here the baby was, on the verge of tears because nearly all his friends have lost their first teeth and his were all present and correct, if slightly wobbly if you really tried hard to move it. It reached the point a few weeks ago that the desire for it to fall out so he could share in the delight of his friends began to outweigh the sentimentality of it all. The tooth wobbled for a good 2 months. Until yesterday.

After a bite into a traybake from the local church cake sale yesterday after school. the tooth became a whole lot more wobbly. In fact, it was looking precarious. So much so that the entire afternoon was taken up with wiggling it, twisting it, a LOT of examining it and looking for any trace of blood on tissues. We even googled 'how to pull out a baby tooth out'. Oh, it was a lengthy process! But he was brave and determined, and eventually, with a little help from mummy, it was finally extracted and held aloft with much glee, pride and a rather toothy grin!