It really does taste so much better when you are not supposed to be in the pizza shop eating it but instead somewhere else eating some really bland, awful food. This was at Italian Village Pizza in Squirrel Hill. Yum!
Tristyn had to see the orthodontist yesterday. It's much too soon for braces but his dentist feels it would be a good idea for the orthodontist to get on board early and I agree. At the orthodontist we found out that Tristyn takes after me and his mouth is too small. Mostly his top jaw--the bottom one looks to be fine. The orthodontist said there are basically two paths to take.
1) Begin a series of yanking teeth. Yanking baby teeth at necessary times to guide the grown up ones down so they don't get stuck (as they currently are now) in the gums. Then, later yanking grown up teeth to make room for the rest of his teeth (like they did to me) and FINALLY a course of braces that will take a long time (like mine) as now moving things around lots and lots.
2) Determine if his top jaw can be stretched (sounds scary, but the orthodontist said because of the nature of such young children it's rather easy as their bones aren't so immobile yet) and then go about stretching his top jaw. If I got it right, that consists of a band of some sorts kinda across the roof of the mouth that has a little 'key' that gets turned to slowly, slowly, slowly make some room. If this is done, the grownup teeth will likely come down on their own into the space that has been created (or if the baby tooth is still there, knock it out like a good grown up tooth is supposed to do before moving in). Then, he'll have all his teeth and likely in a fairly nice manner! A course of braces at that point would be mainly to fix up relatively small things and it would be for less time and with less yanking about. Plus tooth retention!
Right now, I'm leaning towards #2. Not because I found/find it bothersome to be less toothed (?haha is that a word??) than the rest of you but because isn't it better to try to keep as many of your teeth as possible? Just in case later in life something happens to one or two of them?
Anyways, the doctor said normally he's 100% sure the best way to go but with Tristyn he's not sure and wanted to do a complete workup. Some pictures, more x-rays and some molds. He'll use them to measure spaces and teeth and whatever else it is one does when one is an orthodontist and then he and I will talk about it next Friday. But get this. The orthodontist said that he would not charge me (or insurance) one penny for the workup.....because....
....he found determining which course to be the best one for Tristyn to be a challenge! And his own professional curiosity had gotten the better of him to the extent that he wanted to do the work up regardless of what I had said.
Prior to this point I had every intention of telling him to please do the work up because I want to make the decision well informed but a free work up? Heck yeah, I'll take it! Then, he asked me all about our insurance company too and I did my best to explain what we do and what types of insurance. SOOOOOO.....family of mine who reads this blog occasionally and works at the office.....if the orthodontist ever calls in the future I'm staking my claim to that commission!
After all of this time where Tristyn was mostly wide-eyed even everything was explained to him over and over again we finally got to leave. Tristyn looked at his watch and asked me if I was taking him back to school. There was plenty of time.
"NO WAY!!" said I. "Who wants to do a dumb thing like that? Let's go to lunch and then go play!"
And that is exactly what we did.
