Smile

I love this smile!

I always have.

Andrew has the cutest smile. I know I'm his mom and so my opinion probably doesn't count but I have gotten so many comments from other people about how precious his smile is. You have to admit that he is one good looking boy. Those dimples have always melted hearts when he flashes a smile.

That's why I was so sad when the accident happened. Boys will be boys. A year and a half ago on an extremely hot summer day the boys decided to make a water slide out of the metal slide in the back yard by putting a hose at the top. Everything was fantastic until Andrew decided to run up the wet slide, slipped and hit his front teeth on the slide.

It usually comes in handy to have a husband that is a doctor. When Andrew ran in the door with bloody, loose, chipped front teeth all I could think was "Bones grow back! Teeth don't!" Jason can fix broken bones and stitch up cuts but there's not much he can do for teeth. While we were driving to the dentist one of the teeth actually fell out. The only advise Jason had was to put it in spit and get to the dentist as fast as we could. We were grateful that the dentist was able to put the tooth back in and save it but little did we know that was only the beginning of Andrew's tooth problems.

The dentist filled in the chipped parts of his front teeth but said eventually when he was older they would have to do a crown. Over the last year and a half he has continued to slowly chip away more of that front tooth thanks to candy canes, football, soccer, hard to open water bottles... I was beginning to feel like a broken record telling him not to bite anything hard with his front teeth. In January he chipped off an even larger piece of tooth when his friend suggested opening a juice bottle with his teeth. Immediately dollar signs started flashing through my mind and I reacted in a not very nice way. (HOW MANY TIMES have I told you NOT to open things with your teeth?!!) So our trip to the dentist wasn't a fun one. The dentist said there was no choice but to put a crown on so while he did the prep work for the crown the receptionist showed me all the dollar signs even after the insurance paid their part. I felt like Andrew was sufficiently punished when they told him not to eat any candy or gum for two weeks until the permanent crown was put on. I had no idea then how long "two weeks" was really going to be.

We went to the dentist two weeks later to get the crown put on and were surprised when they told us the crown was the wrong color. I really didn't know it was that hard to match teeth. They sent it back to the lab and we returned a week later to find out again that it was the wrong color. This time the guy from the lab actually came over when we were there to make sure he matched Andrew's teeth. He took it back to the lab and a week later we returned to get the crown put on. Wrong color again! By then Andrew was really getting frustrated! We went to a Weber State basketball game one night and Jared brought a friend along. Jared's friend bought some candy and Andrew was literally in tears that he couldn't have any. AR fun day came and he was the only one in his class that couldn't chew gum (they can pay money to chew gum for the day to raise money for AR). Valentine's day came and went and his bag of candy is still untouched. I kept telling him, "just a few more days" but every time we went in to the dentist the color was still wrong. I have lost track of how many trips we have made to the dentist but I'm sure it's more than 10. We even went to the lab a couple times so the guy could work on the crown while Andrew was there. Still no luck. I think he has made at least a dozen crowns and keeps trying to stain and bleach them over and over to get the right color.

So this morning we were thrilled that the crown was the finally the right color and they were able to cement it on! The good news is that with enough money I can still see the smile I adore and hopefully Andrew has learned to be a little more careful with his teeth!