Retarded Teeth and A Sad Goodbye

Thursday we took off for Wichita for the boys dental appointments. Our dentist is a short little Korean man, probably in his 60’s, who, while very very good with the kids, can be a bit hard to understand at times. Every time he comes in he always greets Tristen- “My man, Tittan.” Tristen always laughs, because he says this EVERY TIME we see him. Something else I always hear? “Bad…berry berry bad.” My boys both have a congenital defect where they are missing teeth. Under their baby teeth, some of their adult teeth are missing. Gone. Never formed. I blame this on freaky Bruckner genes, as my husband has the very same thing. T and D are only missing one tooth, which coincidentally, turned out to be the exact same tooth. J, on the other hand, is missing 4!! Every time we go there, we always here a different story to what J needs to have done. Last time, Dr just told Jacob: “You need go get REALLY good job when you older, you pay for own teeth!!” hehe J’s teeth do not seem to be a priority right now, even though he has so many missing. He has a BIG mouth, with beautiful spacing and lots of room, therefore none of the baby teeth are in danger of being pushed out at the moment. It’s T’s they seem most concerned about. He has a smaller mouth, with teeth already cramming up, and that baby tooth with no adult tooth is about to the kicked out of there with the adult teeth coming up on both sides. They would like to see him go to the Orthodontist, and have that baby tooth pulled and the tooth behind it brought up in it’s place, or just have it pulled and have an implant put in there.

Having children is just grand.

BTW--the dentist was doing something fun to get the kids to get rid of their Halloween candy. He was paying any patient of his $5 for every pound they bring in.

"Tittan--you have candy?" "Yeah, lots!" "You bring-uh-me candy, I give-uh-u money. You bring-uh-me 1 pound, I give-uh-you 5 dolla. You bring-uh-me 2lbs, I give-uh-you $10 dolla.
The dental hygienist told me that while it was a great idea, he had thrown it all in a giant box in the back and all the nurses have been eating it!

We lost one of our buns Wednesday night. We had had Noel for 7 years. She was one of the buns that started the love of rabbits here at my house. I had suspected she was sick, as while I was holding her about a month ago, I felt a rather large “bump” in her lower belly. Rabbits have a high rate of uterine cancer if they are not spayed and I believe this is what happened with her. I had actually discussed with D just taking her over and having her put to sleep. I’m glad she didn’t make us make that choice. She never looked or acted sick, until Wednesday afternoon, when T discovered she hasn't eaten or drank from the day before. She died about 2 hours later. T is really upset. She was taken care of everyday by him. I told him that rabbits don’t usually live to be 7, and that he took really good care of her for her to be that old. It’s never easy.
She was a wonderful, prissy, big ol’ fat lop eared rabbit with round big brown eyes that looked like marbles. She was a bunny version of a cat. If you held her and petted her, she would immediately have to groom herself where ever you had touched her. Then she’d glare at you, as if to say “Gross, dirty, humans.” Noel survived a month living in Bud Louthan's garden one summer after she escaped from her cage. We thought she was long gone till we happen to hear a rumor that Bud had a “pretty” rabbit he’d been trying to catch in his garden. She was very, very, fat when he caught her, and was not at all happy with being caged and living on a diet of bland pellets after that. She was also the bun that had the UH-OH litter of babies about 4 years ago. One of the “girl” rabbits my mother brought home to the boys, turned out not to be a girl.
Most of our rabbits we have are thought of more as livestock, and though we care about the well being of each of them, there are just a few out there who worm their way into our hearts for whatever reason and they become special pets. We are going miss that ol’ lady.