Then a few months ago the dentist mentioned that he could see Liza's 6-year molars coming in. Liza was all excited because these are the first permanent teeth she'll have, ones that won't fall out sometime during grade school (unless she keeps eating Reese's peanut butter cups at every meal and/or gets in a really good fistfight).
My reaction: Oh, crud, here we go again.
At least this time we can reason with her, right?
Yeah, that's not working out so well.
So far we've had the standard baby-teething symptoms, now in a new, bigger, louder, more understandable package. Highlights of the past week:
- snot
- post-nasal drip
- gum pain
- bleeding gums
- headaches
- crankiness
- irritability
This all came to a head Friday night, when I got to spend the hour before I managed to get her to sleep with her on my lap, crying and snotting all over my shirt and wailing about how much her gums hurt and how she didn't really need teeth anyway and she just wants it to STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP. She had already used her fluoride rinse and couldn't eat or drink anything for half an hour, so most of the usual "teething" soothers were out of the question. I gave her an ice cube to crunch on, but she didn't want that because the dentist who came to their school said that chewing ice is bad for your teeth. Bet he doesn't have to deal with teething 6-year-olds at 10 pm much, or he'd rethink that bit of advice.
Anyway, with all of the baby teething toys long gone, all I could come up with was ... the handle of a wooden spoon that's so old it couldn't splinter if it wanted to. So I gave her the spoon, tucked her in bed, and 10 minutes later the spoon handle was covered in tooth marks and she was sound asleep.
I'm hoping she gets over this quick, as there could be definite downsides to using spoons as teethers for big kids:
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