Milestones

About a month ago Emma was in the bathroom brushing her teeth before bed. She made a strange face and said "Mom, it hurts back here" pointing behind her front bottom teeth.

"Let me see" I said as I peeked inside her mouth. "Well, no wonder it hurts, you have another tooth coming in right behind the baby tooth". Her first permanent tooth. The tooth was already through the skin and quite visible.

According to the dentist, this is a frequent occurrence and no cause for concern. In fact, he said that some kids end up with two rows of teeth before the baby ones start falling out. He said that once the baby tooth was out, her tongue would push the permanent tooth right into place.

At any rate, the baby tooth didn't really want to budge. The permanent tooth was wedged in so closely that I was skeptical as to whether or not it would ever wiggle.

Well, wiggle it did. Saturday night, a week ago, we were at the local Hastings bookstore listening to Drew's (our son) band play in the coffee shop. Some friends of ours were there and the girls were bouncing around and being goofy all over the place.

I left to take Kara to the bathroom and as I was coming out I ran into Keith and Emma. Emma had blood running down her lip. I figured she bumped into one of the other kids or something and bit her lip but it wasn't the lip at all. It was that little tooth. The thing was very loose and just wiggling like crazy. I'm still not sure what happened to cause it to get so loose so quickly.

I took her in the bathroom to clean it up and get a better look. When I saw how loose it was I said "That tooth probably needs to come out before bed tonight" thinking she might swallow it otherwise (this has happened in our house on several occasions). She reached inside her mouth, grabbed the tooth, yanked it right out and said "Here!" as she thrust it at me.

I was a bit dumbfounded. No trauma of the first lost tooth, no tears, seemingly no pain, not even a flinch. The permanent tooth was so far in already you almost couldn't even tell that she had lost a tooth. In fact, by the time I actually got around to taking her picture, the new tooth had already moved forward almost to where it should be.

So, there you have it. She has lost her first tooth. The dentist said that looking at her recent x-rays she should be losing the top two front teeth before long. It looks like she'll be singing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" this year.

Milestones like this are a constant reminder of how quickly they grow up. I still remember when our oldest started to lose his baby teeth and that was 15 years ago. Yikes! Who knew we'd still be in the tooth losing phase this many years later. :) We are indeed richly blessed!