Fang

Evan's 3rd tooth broke through this week. At 15 1/2 months of age, he will finally be sporting an "upper" to go with his 2 bottom teeth.

Alas, this new tooth will do him not an iota of good because it is off center -- one position to the right (left? His left, my right) of the place where his 2 front teeth belong. There is nothing beneath it for the tooth to connect with, so the poor kid still won't be able to chew with anything other than his gummy jaw.

Next on the horizon in this painfully slow crawl towards dental development appears to be the top tooth one position to the left of middle, which will break through any day. And there we will stay for a good long while, because nothing else looks even remotely close to making an appearance.

If Evan were my first child, I'm sure I would find this all very unsettling and I'd be obsessed with the long term ramifications of slow-to-arrive baby teeth. Fortunately, the experienced parent in me could give a damn less when his teeth come in -- I know he'll have a full set some day even if a cosmetic dentist has to create them for him. But aesthetically, the perfectionist in me takes serious issue with the fact that my beautiful son is about to be sporting a serious set of fangs. And so I confess to finding this all a little unsettling anyway.

Fortunately, humor trumps perfectionism in my book. You can bet I’ll be taking lots of pictures of his weird looking smile to print in his high school yearbook some day. If he still looks like this come October, I figure I can just throw a cape on him and call him Dracula for Halloween. And by this December, he’ll probably be old enough to sing “All I Want For Christmas Is My 2 Front Teeth” himself. We could have so much fun with this that we might never want those teeth to appear. Except for the chewing thing. I can see why he might want to do that some day.