Josie is heading toward 16 months and she has, like, 2.3 teeth. There's the two little fellers on her bottom row and the one little nub we can see coming in on top. We suspect that more are coming in, because she was teething last night. But we're starting to feel like our perfect little angel is also going to be a perfect little toothless angel. Which wouldn't make us love her any less, but could lead to serious social and dietary problems.
It's not something we've ever worried about, really. But in the past few weeks, I keep running across babies who are Josie's age, or a little younger, and who have these great big mouths full of teeth. We went to this Tot Shabbat thing, for instance, which Josie spent running around with this very sweet little boy who was a month younger than her and who had every single tooth. It was almost freaky to see this tiny person with a mouth that looked ready for a Colgate add.
The truth is, I find Josie's look -- the Gummed look -- cuter than the Toothed look. At the same time, it's one of those things where we pretty much know we're going to have some sleepless nights in the days to come. Because, after all, her teeth are down there somewhere (right? right?) and they're not going to stay down there forever. My mother insists we shouldn't worry, because Lorenzo, my beloved nephew, got all of his teeth seemingly overnight. She tells this story over and over.
So it's going to seem odd to be asking this at this stage in the game, but are there any other Babbleonians whose kids had teeth that came in this late? Or are we as freakish as I feel like we might be?
And also: is there anything we can do when her teeth do start to come in, en masse? Other than our usual procedure of giving her a rum rag and putting on earmuffs. Should we be worried about the fact that Josie is older (and therefore more powerful, and therefore more powerfully capable of expressing her displeasure)? Is there some magic incantation we can say to elicit these missing teeth? Perhaps putting a poster of Julia Roberts over her bed? Or okay, scratch that -- maybe Barack Obama?
Any mouthing off on late teething syndrome most appreciated...
