A Million Dollar Smile

This past week was a milestone one at our house. Ryan got his braces on! I am still trying to comprehend that I have a child old enough to have braces. Kids get braces much younger today than when I was growing up. With the type of correction Ryan needs, in his case, the timing of his age and where he is at in development was perfect. The type of overbite he has is one that would require surgery to fix plus orthodontics had he matured too much.

No it really isn't a million dollar smile . . . only several thousand dollars so far . . . but I keep telling him it will be worth a million bucks when he is all done. He has been such a trooper for this despite his mouth being sore and having to learn to eat and talk with all this hardware in his mouth. He is also doing remarkably well with his brushing and care of them.

In addition to the braces brackets, he has something in the roof of his mouth called an expander and it basically does what the name says. Each night we have to use a little key to turn it one very small, yet still very painful turn. It is essentially spreading his palate in the roof of his mouth. Bill did it the first couple days but last night Bill was back to work and I was on my own. I could hardly stomach it but I did finally succeed and Ry was so patient with me.

I think the really neat part of this is that (and maybe it is because he is so much younger getting braces) but the kids at school haven't picked on him or called him tinsel teeth or anything like that. Rather, they think everything is "cool."