These teeth of yours may kill us all. Your dad and I wring our hands and hearts trying to help. It breaks us to see you hurting so.

No one talks about teeth and how terrible they are. Maybe because it’s against the furthering of the species. Ha. Or maybe yours are extra mean. I suppose we won’t know. I think more each day that our family is complete and perfect just as it is. 

At the end of hard, hard days, even the ones that carry a happy veneer, when it’s been all hands on deck to keep you busy and blissful and curious enough that you forget how much the right side of your face hurts, I fall into bed and hope you can rest. Mostly you sleep through the night these days. 

And now here it is, morning, at a time when you should be sleeping another two hours, and already I miss you. I want to scoop you out of your crib in your big fluffy Goodnights diaper with the starfish, shells and mermaids on it, give you a hug and smell your neck, your hair, and promise you today will be a better day even as I already dread another tantrum at bedtime. 

Oh bedtime. We’ve had quite a storied experience with that in the past two years and, what is it, nine months now? And we had finally gotten it down. You’d lay down with your bottle of goat milk and I would turn on your lullabye you’ve listened to since you were a baby, your two sound machines, lights out. I would say “Night night Ember I vuh vu.” And you would say around your mouthful of bottle, “nigh nigh Mama, uh vuh vu.” And that would be the sweet end to our day. As often as not, you’d push your small hand between the crib slats and say “Grab a hand,” or nothing at all because that gesture was enough, and I would contentedly and happily hold your hand as you drifted off. 

This molar has you acting possessed by a demon at bedtime. Throwing your friends out of the crib. Crying. Asking me to turn off the sound machines, turn on the light, take you back downstairs. 

I know it ends. We’ve been here in whatever developmental stage in your grasp, we’ve been here for almost every tooth and certainly the previous three molars. It feels both comic and fitting that this last one is taking the longest. 

I found The Shard poking through your gums two weeks ago. I was misty eyed. That is not a statement for drama. I wanted to jump in the air and shout hooray but I was too tired from being up and giving all the comfort I could with the help of Motrin from 2 to 4 am. It comes up a little more each day. A sinister seedling from gummy earth. 

One day you might say “Mama, why did you put your finger in my mouth every day, twice a day all those months?” And I will say, that I was waiting. Waiting for that tooth to arrive, to plan its coming out party like the cranky and self serving debutante that it is. 

Though even The Shard is no match for a day at the beach, or running through the spray of the garden hose. With Motrin and bowls of ice, sun hats and “sun screem”, we persist. And we laugh a lot no matter the day.