teething issues

xian's lost her first tooth!

which, of course, means she's growing up. FAST. *sigh*.

we'd noticed that one of her bottom front milk teeth was a little loose after chinese new year so i kept asking her to shake it everyday.

one thing about my firstborn, she's a real scardy cat and her threshold of pain is incredibly LOW. if she falls and scrapes her knee and there's a little drop of blood, you can be sure she'll howl the whole house down. (and she'll try to get out of bathing because she's afraid of the water touching the wound.)

so you can imagine how difficult it was to convince her to pull out the tooth so that the new one will grow out properly. for 2 months, we've been trying our darnest to coax her to let us extract the tooth for her...but to no avail, because she was too terrified of the pain/blood.

anyway, xian did what i told her and faithfully shook her tooth every day. we could already see her first permanent tooth growing at the back and i was concerned that if her milk teeth were not promptly removed, her new set of of teeth wouldn't have space to grow out nicely.

then it happened last saturday, just before bedtime.

xian was fiddling with her tooth, and she was using her tongue to push it forward. i shook it a bit and noticed that it was *almost* out. since she didn't allow the hub to touch it, i wrapped a small towel around my fingers and tugged at it. within seconds, the whole tooth was dislodged!

naturally there was some blood and tears were streaming down xian's face as she screamed in pain. it took me about 10 minutes to console her though i suspect she was upset at the sight of blood more than anything else.

wen was rather subdued as she watched the whole process solemnly, no doubt apprehensive about what was going on and wondering if her tooth would be pulled out anytime soon too!



i was very relieved that the little saga was over. the white tip of another tooth (next to the new tooth) is slowly but surely protruding, and i guess it's only going to be a matter of months before she loses her second milk tooth. and the whole "shake your little tooth" cycle's starting again.

i'm now on the lookout for a little plastic container to keep all of xian's milk teeth. :)