All I want for Christmas...

Last weekend, we pulled both of Keighly's front teeth. They were getting fairy fang-ish from the permanent ones pushing through, and were basically dangling there and ready to be pulled. So we did one on Saturday and one on Sunday.


Keighly before the yankin.








Janet got me a washcloth, and I started the operation. Note the extreme caution toward germs and general cleanliness (plus the precision cranial cradling).






Hold still there.. (Hey, no baldness!)







Ok, lets get serious here. The problem is the tooth I'm trying to get is behind the other tooth, so it was (as Mattie Ross said when she fell into the rattlesnake pit in True Grit) "in a bad way".








As Red Leader (Porkins) said in Star Wars: A New Hope, "Almost there."










There we go! See, nothing to it! (Er, ignore that blood.)









One down.








After a little swishing of warm salt water, all is well.








One day later, it's time to get the other one. At this point we have named it 'sole survivor' after this pair of fake teeth (top right).









Pop! This one was easier to grab, but actually held on better than I thought it would.







Another swish of warm salt water, and there you have it: a vampire!

You can see her permanent front teeth are already visible.









Luckily, she's at the age where a lot of her friends are going through the same thing. In this blurry pic, Keighly's friend Michael also shows he is missing his front teeth.



-Matthew