Expanded

Today, after 3 long months, Liv got her expander off! I thought that it was just going to be grinding the cement off and then popping off the expander, but I was wrong! It did start with drilling, but when the assistant (whose first day it was!) went to suction her mouth, she stuck it too far down her throat and gagged her. After recovering from the gagging and then rinsing her mouth, the orthodontist grabbed some big plier things and started to "pop" the expander off. While he was working on getting it out, he kept commenting on how tight it was on her teeth. I figured that he would drill a little more of the cement off and then try again, but he just kept tugging on it. When it finally popped off, Liv let out a little scream and as the orthodontist pulled it out of her mouth there was a TOOTH stuck in it!!! He said that this occasionally happens when a baby tooth gets loose under the expander. Since the tooth wasn't quite ready to come out, she bled and bled and bled! She finally stopped bleeding and they were able to clean the rest of the cement off and send us on our way. When got out to the car Liv broke down and cried. She didn't know why she was crying just that she was scared when it happened and that her mouth hurt. Poor girl!!



Poor unsuspecting Liv ready to get her expander off...

The damage..

She gets a week for her gums to heal and then we will go back and get her braces on. Hopefully that goes a lot smoother!!

T-Ball Time

This is Harris' first year of T-Ball.  Harris has always shown some good baseball tendencies (good hand/eye coordination, arm strength etc.) and we had some friends in the Ward that also have a 5 year old boy indicate some interest in getting the 2 boys on the same team so we did a little research and finally figured out how to get Harris signed up for some organized sports here in the ABQ (it seemed much more straightforward in Utah).

When I was a child I attempted to play little league baseball and was so terrible, soooo terrible.  I try my best not to transpose my feelings of baseball inadequacy onto my poor son but I think he will do very well despite me :).  (to be fair, my own father went to the Little League World Series and has serious baseball skills).

Already, it's been a ton of fun to watch him.  On to the pictures! I decided to go with captions that would be typical of what I may have been yelling at him from the bleachers (in parenthesis will be my internal monologue and afterthoughts).  This should be good.

Go get 'em, son!  Grrr.... (he is so cute!)

Nice swagger son!  (I love the hand on hip action here.  So funny!)

Run Harris!  Go!  

Catch the ball son!  Nicely done! 

Nice focus son! (this might be a good photo for his baseball card)

Nice swing!  (we've actually done quite a bit of work with him on his swing.  His last couple times at bat had him hitting it all the way to the outfield) 

Keep going! (he is so fast that I almost missed the shot!)

Run home! (you need to zoom in to see the look on his face, pure joy, priceless!)

That's it for now.  I love seeing him enjoy playing sports and will continue to update as the season progresses.

Chet is out, peace!