Teeth and a Cinco De Mayo Improvement Party

I've had teeth on my mind this week.  Primarily, Piper has had a fever since Sunday.  I felt in her mouth and her gum was bulging and I knew she was getting a tooth.  She has been short tempered and miserable all week.  Her naps have been horrible and she has been waking up at 4:45/5:00 each morning.  It makes for a long day that requires large amounts of patience from me.  Can you imagine having a fever for that many days?!  I had a fever a few weeks ago when I was sick and it was terrible.  Poor Piper.  She loves to be outside and that and medicine has really been our only relief from the crankies this week.

Look at those tiny legs!

On Monday I took the boys in to get their teeth cleaned and to ask some questions about their itty-bitty mouths.  They have all been losing teeth lately and there just is no room for the new ones.  Eli lost his first tooth last month and it was the tiniest tooth I've ever seen--smaller even than one of Piper's!  Unfortunately, his baby teeth are so crowded that even the baby teeth are crooked.  And now Will is getting a mouthful of crowded, crooked teeth.  The dentist said that the boys are all developmentally delayed as far as their teeth go and that Will only has two of his four six year old molars and neither Isaac nor Eli have them either.  He joked that Will could be 12 before getting the other two!  I always knew that my kids were slow at getting teeth, I just didn't really they were that slow.  He said that in order for them to get spacers they had to have all four six year old molars and the four top and bottom teeth and so there wasn't much he could do to help at this point.  He said I should just plan on the boys having super crowded, crooked teeth for a long time.  Boo.  I'm really sad for them.  So far it isn't a problem for anyone but Will but it's pretty obvious the others will have the same problem.

Later that night we had a Cinco De Mayo Improvement party.  It was mostly to celebrate Will's improvements in Math.  He has struggled to remember to turn in his finished homework.  His testing scores show that he is more than proficient in math.  He is in one of the higher math classes.  However, he has a very hard time remembering to turn in his homework and therefore, his math grade was a C.  He was devastated when he got the C because he had been working really hard to improve and turn in his work.  He has brought the grade up to a B and recently got his progress report and he had an A!  We were all so proud of him.  The rest of us have all had things we are working on as well so we decided to make it an excuse to celebrate!  The boys rode the motorcycle and their bikes while I made dinner.  We had a yummy dinner of Mexican Lasagna and homemade salsa and guacamole.  Then we went and bust open the pinata.  Since it was Monday and FHE, we combined that with our Improvement party and the boys went and grabbed their journals.  They came down and Mike and I helped them find the past two blessings they've received this year (their birthday blessing and start of the school blessing).  They each privately read the blessings and then we helped them identify the things that Heavenly Father wanted them to improve on.  They each chose two things they wanted to work on.  We talked about how Heavenly Father tells us in our blessings things He wants us to know and things he thinks we should be better at and that if we didn't write them down and then read the blessings and work on the things we were told in those blessings then the blessing would be pointless.  We would forget and not remember the things we were told.  I think it was a good way to combine a few things--celebrating our improvements, Cinco De Mayo, and having Family Home Evening.  It was a nice evening.

someone should tell the dude to smile!

it's blurry but look how cute she is!  She just learned to jump and loves it!

it's a ghost!