Teeth

One Friday morning in January 2005 Evyn fell. She was a toddler, so falling is not so uncommon. It did not seem to be a big deal until I saw the blood and heard the screams. Every mother knows the cry that says, "ouch! that hurt but it's not the end of the world." Then, there is the other cry, the one that makes you drop what you are doing in a nanosecond. The one that says"get your ass over here, this is serious business!"

The fall was serious business. This is what resulted. The happy face with the mangled gums still breaks my heart.

All four of those beautiful white teeth, roots still attached, gone. These pictures were taken the evening of the accident. She bounced back very easily. Holly and I suffered from self-diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for months following this event.

A year later, we had all gotten very used to seeing our beautiful toothless Evyn. My desire to explain why my two and a half/three year old had a big black hole in her mouth waned. Over time, we even found a tiny bit of humor in the ordeal. We were invited over for a play date on the day in 2006 that just happened to be the one year anniversary of the big accident. We were to bring something sweet, so this is what we made:

As time has gone on, Evyn's missing teeth have just become part of who she is. As she has grown older, the gap in her mouth has stood out less. Her smile remained huge, gums and all. She has not missed her teeth one bit. In first grade, she looks just like most of her classmates, all missing various teeth. Over the last few months, however, we have been watching her gums bulge, her two front teeth teasing us, threatening to pop through. One finally did pop through right around Christmas. Once the corner broke through, the tooth has emerged and is moving in rather quickly now. It is white and healthy-looking, and it is changing her speech slightly as she adjusts to having a front tooth again, five years later almost to the day.