Toothy Trooper

This post is for her grandparents, so they know she did just fine with her teeth extraction: It's finished ~ Hooray!! All 8 teeth that needed to make a rather quick departure from Alyssa's mouth are now gone. She went in for an appointment earlier in the month, expecting them to pull all 7 baby teeth that were left at that time, and they opted to do only one side {3 teeth} that day, which was both a relief and a huge disappointment. She and I both thought it was going to be a horrible, but quick one and done kind of situation, and as it worked out, she had to go back last night for the final four.

Dave took her to the second appointment, and apparently it went a lot smoother than the first. I'm not sure if he was just giving me a hard time, but he seems to think he is the parent that has a calming effect on the girls :-). The difficulties during the first appointment started when I had to take Rebekah into the hall before the major work even began. Rebekah kept asking me through sobs not to let the dentist pull Alyssa's teeth. Her panicked pleas weren't doing anything to calm the already nervous mood in the room, so to the hallway it was. Finally when the actual hard part began, I couldn't take the plier's terrible rubbing sound on Alyssa's teeth. I kept holding and patting her hand, covering my mouth with my other hand maybe to keep from having an outburst of my own and trying to assure her she was fine, at the same time that I had to keep checking on Rebekah's very scared state, so I doubt I was that convincing. At least it's done and Alyssa is now braces ready, once those grown up teeth start growing in...

This picture was taken over the weekend when she still had one side of molars. She keeps sticking her tongue through the space where her molars should be. I kind of enjoyed that I caught this in a photo because it's a pretty common expression for her lately. It wasn't easy, I have a greater understanding of why we use the expression "it was like pulling teeth..." to describe something that was difficult and no fun at all, but it wasn't as horrible as it could have been, and the best part of all is that it is DONE! She was a trooper, she did little more than whimper when she saw the needles come out to numb her mouth. She was comforted with a McDonald's fruit smoothie and a dinner of jello with lots of whipped cream, so she's doing just fine. And she was really impressed with the huge roots her teeth had! (they're gross and bloody looking, not blog photo appropriate, otherwise I would have posted a pic of them here)