First tooth out!!!

A few weeks back I spotted a new tooth in Eli's mouth! Yes, there it was, a big adult tooth coming up through the gum behind his baby teeth at the bottom front. I was a bit taken aback initially, but after asking a few Mum's I discovered that this was a reasonably common phenomenon. In fact I learnt that this is sometimes referred to as a shark tooth, since shark's have rows of teeth. Eli quite liked the sound of that, but he was more excited at the prospect of losing his first baby tooth, especially since many of his friends at school have lost 6 or 7 of them already. I have tried to convince Eli that not having lost his yet was a good thing, but now that the shark tooth had appeared I guess it was time. Not that the baby teeth at the front were budging much at first - they were quite happy staying put. But fast forward about 10 days and there was movement aplenty. One of Eli's baby teeth was on the way out and it was finally being pushed from below as you can see from this photo on the right.

And that was the beginning of the end for this tooth, as Eli took to the task of encouraging it out by wiggling it at every opportunity. It eventually relented and came out and as you can see from this slightly less toothy grin of Eli's, he was pretty happy with himself.



It was quite a long tooth - I had kind of forgotten that they are connected to our jaws (in my defence it has been a while since I've lost one). We celebrated, as always, with a range of different photographs...









Eli was also duly rewarded for his efforts, with the tooth fairy paying him a visit that night (and leaving, to ensure no domestic disputes elsewhere, an undisclosed amount of money). As you can imagine (and see in this last photo), this large adult tooth still needs more room, so there will no doubt be more toothy wiggles coming our way soon...