Could Have Fooled Me

Teething (v): the process by which children aquire teeth. Although there are only 20 "baby teeth" that need to come in, this process will last from the time a child is 4 months old until puberty. Even when there are no concrete signs of teeting (i.e. a tooth popping through the gums) you will believe that your child is getting a tooth. It can take 6 months or more for any one tooth to come in once your child starts showing "signs of teething" (excessive drool, fussiness, low grade fever, difficulty sleeping).

I'm wondering why the above definition of teething isn't what one finds when "Googling" the topic. We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for Caleb to get more teeth. His first two came around 8 months, and 1 month later he aquired four more teeth at one time. I kept thinking that he'd get the other two bottom front teeth anytime. We've been through numerous periods of crazy drooling, spurts of with middle of the night wakeups, biting on and off, and even times when I could swear that I felt a tooth popping through the gum in the front. Andrew and I had given up on it, and refused to use "teething" as an excuse for anything anymore. Yesterday I stuck my hand in C's mouth toward the back and I to my surprise I felt two teeth definitely poking through the gum. That's right, he's getting molars before the rest of his front teeth. So it official, Caleb now has 8 teeth: four on top in the front, two bottom front, one top left molar and one bottom left molar. After all of that trying to guess when he was teething, these seem to have come in with relatively little disturbance to his schedule and activities. We can only hope that the remaining teeth will come in without issue as well!