The boys' latest saga

Last week was dental week for the boys. On Monday, RJ had his orthodontist appointment. He got the heavier weight upper arches, "chains" put on both uppers and lowers, and super heavy rubberbands on both sides. The chains are something I had never seen before. Instead of tightening up the wires to pull the teeth together, they put these things that look like rubberbands twisted around his brackets. The object is for them to close up the spaces in between his front teeth. And then the other rubberbands finish pulling his bottom jaw forward to close up his overbite. He gets to take off the rubberbands everytime he eats or brushes his teeth and then has to put them back on.

He was pretty sore for the first week of having all this done but he's been faithful about wearing his rubberbands. The theory is that if he wears them like he's supposed to, he'll be done with braces completely by the first part of October. Oh and he got a variety of colors (his fav is green and orange). He went through and picked out all the pink ones. I wouldn't let him throw them away though. I told him he gets grounded for doing something stupid, he has to wear the pink ones to school. Needless to say, we haven't had to enforce it... yet!

Tuesday was the regular dental check ups. RJ came out with a clean bill of health on his (which he was grateful for!). Robert didn't have any cavities. However, they noticed how his permanent teeth were really starting to turn sideways. So they did a panoramic xray. There they found that his permanent canines had completely missed the roots of the baby teeth and were pushing into the permanent ones! This means they are going to pull at least 2 baby teeth (tomorrow) and hope that gives the canines some room to redirect themselves. If they don't start coming down on their own, he will have to have them surgically brought down and bracketed in place. We are hoping that they move on their own!

On a side note, they did discover something else weird about Robert (imagine that!). He only has 3 wisdom teeth! When I mentioned that his uncle was missing a canine, they started counting teeth on his xray. He may be missing another permanent tooth as well but they won't be able to tell until they get his canines out of the way.