Two Front Teeth

The traditional holiday carol "All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" took on a new meaning at the McKinstry household this year. Both our little ones were struggling to cut teeth this December and both ended up getting two brand new front teeth.

Hadley's been chomping on everything for months. It seems like people around us have been telling me forever that she'd probably be getting some teeth soon. As I expected from my experience with Caleb teething, all that chewing didn't produce any results for a quite a while though. Finally, one night while feeding her dinner, Dave found a sharp little pearly white poking through. December 13th marked the day that we would all have to be careful getting our fingers anywhere near that girl's mouth. 

Like Caleb, her first tooth was one of her lower central incisors; the difference was that his showed up on the left first and hers appeared on the right. The second tooth didn't quite make it in time for Christmas but popped through a couple days later. While I wish I'd gotten a shot of her with just her first tooth, sometimes I'm sadly a little too slow and miss milestone pictures. :( However, I did get some really cute shots of her the past few days showing off those new chompers.

 

 

 

 

A certain little person absolutely loves using her toothbrush too. She is good at letting me get in there and get her teeth clean, and she is also super happy when it is her chance to have a turn brushing. The problem is that she cries when I have to take it away!

 

Caleb also got a couple new front teeth around the holidays. Right about the time Hadley's first tooth broke through, Caleb finally got his upper canines. The week before, I'd taken the kids to the dentist with me when I went for my check-up and asked the tech and the doctor if I should be concerned he hadn't gotten these yet since pretty much every kid we knew his age had had them for awhile and he hadn't cut any teeth in a long time. My uncle and one of my cousins both had issues with these same teeth and never got adult ones; both of them actually still have their original baby canines. Both the tech and the dentist assured me that I shouldn't worry about it for now and if they didn't come in by the time he was three we could do an x-ray. Thankfully, they decided it was time to come through and Caleb has a complete mouthful of teeth as he should have now. 

While Hadley's always smiley which makes taking a picture of the inside of her mouth easy, Caleb was much more wiggly. I got a few shots though of him with his new teeth coming in.

While Caleb has never really been a biter, Hadley is showing signs that she might go down that road much to my dismay. She has nipped me quite a few times the past few days - the worst being when I was nursing her, which I never had to worry about with Caleb who stopped at six months before he got any teeth. I have scolded her to try to dissuade her from trying it again, and thankfully our super sensitive girl, who starts crying whenever we fuss at her, seems to understand that she's done wrong. There is still that need to chomp something though so I've been trying to give her a pacifier to chew on when she gets in a nibbly mood.

Our doctor told me a while ago not to break Caleb of his pacifiers while he was teething, and the more I thought of it, it made sense to me that maybe he never was much of a biter unlike other kids we knew his age that didn't take a pacifier. Recently, after he'd given them up and the new teeth were coming through, he did bite Hadley's finger one night when she stuck it in his mouth. I am not sure if it was because she invaded his space or because he was used to chewing on the pacifier that he no longer had, but he of course was punished and has done fine since. A day or so later, Hadley bit him on the leg though, so I had to make a bit of a production out of scolding her too in front of him and then explain to him that she was too little to really understand that she was hurting him. She's bit his finger before too because he purposely puts in her mouth to see what she'd do. I, of course, advised him that this is a bad idea, but I guess he'll learn one way or another. I hope all this biting business stops soon though so we can all feel safe again. :)