teeth

awhile ago akaiya was playing on the floor while i went upstairs to change the laundry. when i came back down kaiya was licking the floor and when i went to move her i noticed that her cheek was red. kaiya likes to lick the floor so i thought that she had just abraded it slightly while she was doing that. when i turned her over i noticed that she had blood coming out of her mouth. i started to panick a little bit at this point b/c i had no idea how she could have gotten an injury that would cause her to bleed like that. if she would have hit her head on the floor i would have heard it...so i looked into her mouth and saw her tooth missing. at this point i was getting really anxious! i just happened to look behind me and noticed this tiny little tooth laying on the floor. i was really stunned to see that she had lost a tooth. i have my hands in her mouth quite a bit working on oral motor exercises and i would think that i would have noticed a loose tooth - but apparently i didn't. i still wasn't convinced that the tooth had come out of it's own accord so we made an appointment to go see the doctor. he looked at me like i was crazy and told me that kids her age lose their teeth. she was a little over 5.5 at that time and i thought that was pretty early...especially for a kid that didn't get all of her teeth until pretty late...but kaiya never does anything on a regular time schedule so i guess this is just par for the course. she has been going at a rate of losing one tooth every month and a half from then on. the teeth start growing in pretty quickly as well. i was worried that she would lose them all and then we would have to wait ages for them to come back in, but that hasn't been the case. one of the biggest concerns i have with her losing her teeth is that she's going to swallow one of them. so far we have been lucky and that hasn't happened. the second loose tooth was very obvious. kaiya would push it in and out with her tongue and play with it all the time. i tried a couple of times to pull it out myself but it was hanging on so i couldn't. then one day kaiya was sitting next to me on the couch and i heard "crunch crunch crunch". i looked around because i knew i didn't give her anything to eat so i was trying to figure out where the crunching was coming from. i looked at her again and saw her looking at me and chewing on something. i realized she was chewing on her tooth so i set to work on trying to pry her jaws open and get the little thing out before she swallowed it. she put up a fight before finally spitting it out. the third tooth was the easiest one. it was really loose, and when i tried to pull it out, it came out right away. now we are on our fourth loose tooth and i'm starting to think her mouth is going to get really crowded with all of these adult teeth! so far they look like they are going to fit, but she has a VERY tiny little mouth...we shall see :)

first tooth gone!

she loved to put her finger in the empty space...

trying to figure out what's going on in her mouth