Metal Mouth

I've taken a break from blogging over the past couple of weeks because I was using every spare hour or two for painting the hallway, and then dealing with the consequences of that (mostly exhaustion!). With our ranch style home, the hallway is the nerve center and occupies a lot of square footage...and has six doorways for bedrooms, bathroom, and closets...yeesh but it takes a long time to paint all those moldings and cut in the line between wall and ceiling neatly. Walls are a medium tan color, moldings are lighter tan (using leftover paint from the living room) and it looks great now!

Anyway, that's not what I intended to write about this morning. Son #1 began the process of getting straight teeth last Wednesday, when the orthodontist put rubber spacers in between his molars top and bottom. This was extremely uncomfortable for him, but the good news is that he finally conquered the mind-over-matter brick wall that had previously rendered him unable to swallow Tylenol. At about 01:30 last Thursday morning, the Tylenol kicked in and he got to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon was the big time. An hour in the chair. The doc removed the spacers from the top jaw (whew) and attached the braces. My son chose a cool electric blue from the color palette. A bit of discomfort while eating dinner last night, but he took the doc's advice and cut up all chewy food very small. No midnight yowling about pain. Played it safe this morning and had fruit instead of crunchy cereal. Tonight's the spring band concert (and he has two clarinet solos) so that will be the real test of nerve endings.

I didn't have any metal in my mouth when I had the Invisalign braces. I went for adjustments every two weeks. With the metal braces, he only has to go once a month for adjustments. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me. Can't wait to see the results. After writing a $1000 check last night, and anticipating the $170 monthly payments for 22 months, I've got my eyes on the prize.