It’s for realsies now… After weeks and weeks of false alarms, the little man is finally teething. His ridiculously adorable toothless grins are coming to an end and before we know it, he’ll have a brand new set of mini-chompers and we’ll be eating beef jerky together.
Now when he opens his mouth, there’s a little white nub interrupting his once-pristine gum line. One lone soldier awaiting battle. His first tooth will be the left front one on the bottom. According to Google, the first teeth are normally the bottom middle. Google also tells me that he will experience some of the following:
- Drooling – It’s really hard to tell if this has increased because Popeye has been soaking through onesies since he was around six days old. Between his nonstop peeing and persistent mouth-leaking, carrying him around is very similar to carrying around about 20 pounds of wet towels. If the wet towels flipped and flopped like a fish trying to get back into the water.
- Gum Sensitivity – It took the little dude a looooooong time to accept a pacifier. Like the bottle, we had to find the right one and it had to be on his terms. Make no mistake, the person in charge of our home is less than a year old and he rules with a miniature iron fist.
- Irritability / Fussiness – Check and mate.
- Biting Behavior – This is secondhand information, since I haven’t personally breastfed him (don’t judge me), but mama has compared him to a rabid wolverine when he loses focus while on the boob (his focus was already suspect to begin with). If he is distracted or bored, he will twist and turn and shred the nipple like an out of control cheese grater.
- Refusing Food – This has most definitely not happened. If anything, he’s digesting more than ever. He is also starting to eat more real food but still prefers mama’s special blend. He basically eats just enough real food to transform his dumps into masterworks of olfactory horror. Quick question: Are all baby farts as wretched as his? I sure hope so.
- Sleep Problems – Checking in with the Googs again informs me that an 8 to 9 month old should be sleeping 13-14 hours per day. Once I finish a strange combination of laughing and crying, I use the maths to figure out Popeye’s daily average and come up with more like 9-10 hours. Recently, he informed us that one nap would be more than sufficient and that his nap would last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half. He enjoys mixing it up so that it’s nearly impossible to get a day’s worth of chores done while he rapidly recharges. Also, preparing him for the nap often takes longer than the duration of said nap.
As you can see, we have our hands full with our little gnawing nugget and his growing collection of teeth buds. The good news is that the first one is almost in. The not so good news is that we have 19 left to go. Hooray!
