Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Tooth Trouble

Riley's front tooth is just dangling, waiting for a good yank for it to be gone, and he refuses to let anybody pull it. Last night while I was at volleyball, Ken convinced him to run some dental floss around the tooth so that he could just yank the floss to extract it. Riley worked the floss under and around his tooth, but then refused to pull it.

When I arrived home, Riley was walking around with six inches of dental floss hanging out of his mouth. Ken explained what was going on, and it was all I could do not to just yank it out while Riley was yapping. Finally, I told Riley to get the floss out of his mouth and go to bed. Oops, one problem, the floss was stuck. It seriously was not coming out.

We tried everything short of just yanking out the floss and the tooth, but the floss refused to budge. I told Riley there was no other option but to just rip the whole mess out of his mouth, but he refused. He had a solution, and after about a minute, he had trimmed the floss down to about 1/2 an inch with a pair of scissors. Nice.

I grabbed some Oragel to numb his tooth, and then persuaded him to let me have a go at tooth removal. I don't like pulling teeth, by the way. Riley made me do three applications of Oragel before he felt he was sufficiently numb, and then gave me the go-ahead to yank out the tooth. Wouldn't you know, that bugger just refused to come out even though it's hanging out at a 45 degree angle?

Then I threw Riley an apple and told him to eat it and the tooth still held out. Nothing was working. Finally I sent him to bed, and this morning I sent Riley off to school with the dental floss and tooth dangling from his gums, along with one simple instruction. "When you're playing with your friends at recess today, encourage one of the stronger ones to punch you in the mouth. Then we don't have to worry about that tooth anymore." (It worked the last time his brother got him good in the kisser...)

Besides, didn't I mention that I really hate having to pull teeth?

6 comments:

Bobbie said...

I always told you kids when your teeth were loose that I needed to dry them off real good with a kleenex before they would come out.

I would then put one in your mouth and work it around for a while until the tooth was really dry, get a tight grasp on the tooth AND .........

Before anyone knew what happened, it was out.

Then we dealt with the tooth fairy.

Colleen said...

I tried that with a dry washcloth. It must have one last nerve or something that's keeping it there.

That, and his teeth are so dang little I couldn't get a good handle on it.

Anonymous said...

I remember mom and dad pulling our teeth with a dry washcloth...

Don't worry Colleen, it'll come out! Give Riley another year or two, and he'll work them like crazy to get them on his own, and maybe before they are truly ready.

-Kellie

Colleen said...

Okay, it came out the day I posted about it. He ran off the bus and showed me the gap, and I asked when it fell out.

"I popped it out with my toungue during math class."

Good, problem solved.

Anonymous said...

Yeah!!! Did the tooth fairy come to your house?

-Kellie

Colleen said...

Yep, that crazy fool left him a dollar. Which Riley promptly left on the kitchen table.

Guess it's mine?