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| Taken just before heading to the dentist. |
We noticed it last week during our nightly routine. Everybody had peed - the boys peeing altogether as usual, standing three abreast in front of our little makeshift urinal, while Jubilee sat daintily on the toilet seat and the whole lot of them filled the concrete bathroom with the sound of tinkling. After that, they had all stacked their clean clothes on my dresser for the next day and tossed their dirty clothes in the hamper. Then they lined up for their nightly tooth-scrubbing (they brush their own teeth in the mornings, but at nighttime those ivories are mine).
When Brave parted his poofy red lips, I saw what his brother Zion had at this age, and their brother Gene before that: shark teeth, when permanent teeth pop up behind baby teeth rather than pushing up under them. Two rows of teeth are the result. A visit to the dentist is the solution.
So I called Dr. Torres, our friendly Filipino dentist. We had a hard time finding his office, since we had only ever visited his Tongzilin branch, but when I called his personal cell phone, he met us in the parking lot dressed in white from his neck down to his toes (I'm serious, his loafers were tooth-white leather).
Tooth pulled! First tooth lost for our third child. 50 kuai slipped under his pillow while he slept (the tooth fairy is generous with the first one, after that it's 10 kuai per). Way to be brave, Brave!
