Birthdays and Dental Woes

On Saturday we went to Mission Bay for a birthday party. It was a lot of fun. I got permission from everyone to be able to take pictures and the kids had a blast playing games and eating yummy food. Definitely a successful 2-year birthday party, until....

After we'd been there a while, Buddha decided to catapult himself, mouth first, into a step-up on the playground. He knocked one of his front teeth way off course and we spent the following four hours driving from dentist to dentist and getting his teeth fixed. My three year old now has braces. Okay, not really braces, they call it a splint, but it looks like braces. Basically his one good tooth is holding his other bad tooth forward.

The whole ordeal was just that - an ordeal. Poor Buddha wouldn't let the first dentist even look inside his mouth. So he referred us to a Pedodontist who was on call in another part of town. I liked this lady. She was very nice. But I was sort of wishing that she would take my cue and follow my lead in order to calm Buddha down and ease his mind about the whole dentist thing. Instead, she just kept yakking away at him, talking over him, being loud, etc. I'm sure it works with some children, but that's not my MO with my kids. Buddha is used to being listened to and having a really soft, soothing environment when he's stressed out. So, he wouldn't let her look either, and she didn't have an assistant with her, so she was unwilling to sedate him. Our only other option was to strap him into a Papoose. It was really sad. There he lay on the table, struggling against the straps holding his wrists to his side, his feet were all wrapped together and his arms were secured with another section of the wrap. He was in a little cocoon and he was not liking it at all. I was fine watching all this because I knew there would really be no other way to fix Buddha's tooth. She sidled up to him, tucked his head against her chest and proceeded to apply a topical anesthesia, shoot some numbing solution into his gums, and pull his tooth forward again. He screamed the entire time. We finished and were almost out the door with a panting, despondent Buddha when we noticed that his teeth closed right on top of each other (in the front) so we had to turn around and start all over again. Argh! This time she applied the splint to hold that tooth forward. We drove to get Buddha a milkshake, but he fell asleep on the way home and drank it later when he woke up. Tylenol has been our dear friend through all this and now Buddha seems to be doing just fine. I kind of miss Buddha's straight (but very separate) toothy grin. Now he'll have a very separate and crooked grin - at least until he's six or seven. :)

Incidentally, with Buddha's first dental x-rays being taken during this episode, we discovered that Buddha has inherited his Grandpa Bagel's missing teeth phenomenon. You'll notice in the picture of Buddha's teeth below that on one side of his mouth, he doesn't have a tooth between his front tooth and his canine like on the other side. He doesn't even have the adult tooth that would follow the baby tooth down. Interesting.

We played some games like "Pin Your Face on Buzz Lightyear," and...

..."Buzz, Buzz, Zurg."

"Hail, hail the gang's all here!"

Here's the birthday boy testing the finger foods.

Addy

The birthday family.

Ellie-girl. I love this little lady's head of curls and her bright blue eyes!

Here's Rett, the birthday boy, sampling some juice.

Brothers do everything together. :)

Chubby little Jayden.

The Chief and Jacoby talking about some male topic or other...race cars maybe.

This has to be my favorite picture of the day. Ryan and Megan. So darling!

Jacoby and Heather - the birthday parents.

Bugga Man is such a goob. I love him for it, though.

Blowing out the candle - or the match really, since the candle didn't want to light in the breeze.

Heather and Agnes.

Ellie and Coby attacking their cake.

Mmm...frosting. Who can turn down frosting?

Rett and his mommy.

Libby - she's the one responsible for the two beautiful blonde girls. :)

Jeffrey has the greatest big, brown eyes!

Ah, and here we come to the infamous smashed mouth. He looks pretty happy here, eh?
Yeah, this was before the Papoose. :)