Brace yourself!

We now officially have 3 boys in braces--this was not necessarily part of our plan, but here we are. Bryson was very excited to get his on to be like his older brothers, but has since changed his mind and now claims he hates his braces.

And while we are on the subject of braces, I will give a brief update on the orthodontic perils of these three stooges.

Brandon had his teeth pulled over six months ago. As you can see from the picture they have not come in yet. They keep wanting to take off his braces. I keep saying no. We are now scheduled for an appointment next week where he will have his gums lasered open to hopefully help his teeth come in faster. That really doesn't sound fun. My hope is that he will have some teeth before he starts 6th grade in August!

Bryson just recently had his first appointment since getting his braces on. Things are looking OK, but the orthodontist says he needs to have major oral surgery this summer to get rid of 8 more teeth (4 baby and 4 permanent). That's just the way he wanted to spend his summer.

And Tyler...oh Tyler. We recently found out that the roots of his front four top permanent teeth are damaged from the excessive crowding. When I asked what the worse case scenario was they said bluntly, "he could loose his front four teeth!" The goal now is to keep his teeth as long as we can. That's reassuring. They are still trying to get the impacted teeth into position so they can start to pull them down, but this requires frequent visits that are very painful. Tyler claims they hurt worse than getting his wisdom teeth out. OUCH!

At the last visit I told the orthodontist that my oldest daughter didn't have any problems with her mouth, just a normal orthodontic experience. He stopped what he was doing (which happened to be digging around in Tyler's mouth to get out a spring that had embedded itself in his gum) and looked at me in disbelief. He said, "I can't believe that !" Neither can I, because it is looking like the last 3 are going to be just as bad.

Give me strength...oh, and a give me a few million bucks!