Eight...

When I think back on eight all I can seem to remember are braces, teeth, and retainers. This was the year the MP had all kinds of orthodontia drama. It started simply enough, when his two front teeth fell out, only one of them came in. The second one took what seemed like a year (probably more like six months) before it started popping through.

And when it DID come through it was at a serious angle. Like a 90 degree angle. Obviously there was something wrong going on. As it turned out the MP had cooked so long (11 days late) that he had baked an extra tooth smack dab between his front two teeth. That tooth had to come out and the damage already done had to be fixed with braces.

When I was a little girl (back in the era of disco and Luke Skywalker), braces were for older kids. And you usually had to wear them for years. And they resembled torture devices that seemed to engulf your entire mouth. Well, braces have come a long way baby. Braces in the 21^st century are applied to younger children, on fewer teeth, for a shorter period of time.

The first order of business was getting out that extra tooth. No sense trying to move the other ones into place without first fixing the cause of the problem. So off to the oral surgeon we went! They seemed pretty impressed with the extra tooth which I found surprising. I would have thought that oral surgeons were the ‘been there done that’ type of guys who see this kind of thing every day. Apparently not. There was much ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over the tooth in the x-rays they viewed.

 And randomly a lengthy conversation about what they should call it. You know how they have numbers for all your teeth? Well, since this one was extra there was some back and forth on what number it should be. 8B? 9A? or maybe 8 and a half? Guess what, I didn’t care what they called the damn thing, I just wanted them to take it out.

In hindsight it seems as though it was relatively drama free, but I do remember a punked out day on the couch and a stitch that came loose and had to be cut by the school nurse (Eww!!). And the MP got his tooth fairy money AND she let him keep the tooth.

Once he was all nice and heeled up from the surgery it was time to get the braces put on. What was great was that they only covered the front four teeth since those were the only ones impacted by that extra tooth. And really the only ones on the top that were ‘adult’ teeth. Remarkably, the next two on the right hand side just feel out last month and the two on the left, while wiggly, are still hanging tough. So tough in fact that tooth number 5 has the adult tooth coming in over it. Hopefully this won’t lead to more orthodontia. So four teeth braced up and ready for straightening.

The only problem early on was the amount of spit that your mouth produces once the braces are on. He was the spit king of NH for the first two days. Then his mouth got used to it. The braces were on for about 11 months, two months longer than we were initially told. Why can’t orthodontists ever get it right? I have met no one that had braces and got them off on-time or early. That just never happens.

After the braces came off the retainer was built and worn on a daily basis.. I am so impressed that a year and change later he still has the retainer. It probably has something to do with the fact that it is covered in flames and pretty hard to miss. I assumed it was going to get tossed with a random Wednesday lunch at some point. But with that he has been very responsible. Let’s not get it twisted; I still have to clean the damn thing once a week or else I can’t even put it back in its holder.

We are just down to the retainer at night which is no big whoop to anyone. I am guessing he will wear the retainer until he is old enough to drive because the orthodontist told me ‘just a year’.

I am glad that we got this chapter covered early and hope that we have no metal mouth moments from here on out.

Nine….

I have to admit that nine has been my favorite year thus far (I probably said that about every year prior to nine so hopefully this trend will continue and I can sing his praises for many more to come).

If I asked him what the highlight of his year has been there is a very good chance that his answer would be “Blame it on the Wolf”. This was the play that all of the fourth grade classes put on in the spring.

All of the students interested in being in the play had to try out. This led me to my fallback position of hedging your bets and setting reasonable expectations. There are about 100 kids in the fourth grade (the MP is part of a phenomenon known as the “9/11 bubble” a large class of kids who were born in the year after 9/11. I hope the schools are planning for the next big wave which could be called “The Shades of Grey/Magic Mike bubble”. That should be hitting kindergartens around the country right about 2018). I estimated there would be 20 parts in the play at the very most. That is a lot of kids without parts.

The MP decided he wanted to try out for one of the three little pigs, some of the biggest parts in the play besides the wolf. He practiced for days trying out different funny voices and memorizing the lines for each pig. All the while I was saying things like “do your best but if don’t get the part it won’t be the end of the world.” “Just remember there are probably a lot of kids trying out for parts and they are going to need to spread out the parts across all the classes.”

Apparently I was so much of a Debbie Downer he asked if I thought he wasn’t good enough. Well, that wasn’t the case at all. “I think you are brilliant. They would be lucky to have you as one of the pigs. I just don’t want you to be too disappointed if it doesn’t go the way you want.”

It went the way he wanted. He was the main pig of the three and had quite a bit of dialog. Now when someone is critical of a group I am part of, I always assume they are talking about me. I take any criticism straight on the chin even when it is not intended. I apparently also project that onto the MP. He came home about a week and a half before the big performance and told me the teachers were concerned about the students knowing their lines. I told him we were gonna practice til he got it down because I could only assume, having no knowledge of what the rehearsals had been like or what his current memorization was, that they were talking about him.

They weren’t. The first read through we did he knew all of his lines. And could say them in his squeaky pig voice that he walked around the house perfecting.

The night of the performance I was more nervous than he was. I could not believe how well he did. He was funny in all the right parts and had a big grin on his face the whole time. You have never seen a happier pig. He loved it so much; he is going to do a summer theater camp with a showcase performance at the end of his session. I can only assume he will come away from that with an even bigger bite from the acting bug.

Counting Down....

In honor of the Mud Puddle’s upcoming 10^th birthday I thought it would be fun to countdown with a blog a week about each year of his life. So next week, starting with 9, I will cover the highlights of the MPs life and times. I figure that will keep me honest at least until mid-September.