2013

I’ve gone back and forth on writing this post for the past two days.  Instead of trying to remember everything that happened (or even look back to remember) I think I’ll share 13 of my favorite posts from this year (and I snuck a few more in too!)  They’re not in any special order. 

So, here are my favorites for 2013:

1.  Wordless Wednesday in January

I love these photos.  They are some of my favorite. Also, I can’t believe how much she’s changed in a year!

2. Me, 8 Months Later

I’m thankful to say that seventeen and half months later, I’ve worked through most of the issues I was having.  I’m still sad I had the c-section but I no longer think of it daily (or even weekly, YAY!) 

3. 4th Anniversary

We celebrated 4 years of marriage this year.  I love my husband and am so thankful we chose each other!

4. Wordless Wednesday, The Dog Park

We love trips to the dog park.  I got some very cute photos this day.

5. 10 Survival Tip for New Moms

Being a new mom is hard.  Some of these were told to me before Munchkin came along and others I wish people had told me.  I hope they are helpful and encouraging for others.

6. Goals for Motherhood

I enjoyed writing this post as it made me think about what kind of mom I want to be. 

7. Glacier Bay, Alaska

This was easily my favorite day on our Alaskan Cruise (though zip lining in Juneau was fun too!)  Glacier Bay is gorgeous and I’d love to go back some day!

8. 10 Reasons I Love Breastfeeding

I love breastfeeding, so much more that I thought I would.  This is a partial list of why.  I was also super excited to reach my goal of breastfeeding for 1  year.  I’m thankful that I was able to get some breastfeeding photos taken.  I know I will treasure these when Munchkin’s older and nursing is a thing of the distant past:)

 

9. Sobriety- 3 Years

We’ve come so far in three years by taking it one day at a time.  I don’t talk a lot about The Man’s alcoholism on my blog but it is a very real part of our lives.  Writing this post was good for me and allowed me to be encouraged by where we are now.

10. Building a Baby Library on Budget

Reading is so important and I think every child should have a library.  I know it can be hard to build one when funds are limited.  I wrote this to help give others ideas on how get books for their child.

11. Walking

My baby started walking!  I love that she’s mobile.  She’s so much fun.  This post also has the only personal video I posted this year (maybe ever on the blog?)

12. Munchkin’s first birthday

My baby turned one and was the first of many (I hope) birthdays.  I think she’ll enjoy cake a little more at her next birthday!

13. The House

It was hard saying goodbye to my childhood house.  Writing this post helped to find some closure. 

13.5  Swimming

We love taking Munchkin swimming!  She loves it, we love it and it’s great family time!

Happy New Year!

Teeth, Part 2

If you missed part one, you can read it here.

Everything seemed fine with the two dead teeth until one sunny summer Saturday in June 2007.  I was bouncing my niece up and down and I went to give her a big bounce and I bit down and….something cracked in my mouth.  Cracking isn’t a normal noise for your mouth so I put her down and asked my mom to take a look.  She said your tooth cracked, right down the middle.  I looked in the middle and she was right.  My dead tooth, the one in the front was cracked.  Whenever I bit down there was pain. 

Maybe I should mention that my family from NH was visiting cause I was leaving on Tuesday for CA where I was have training for a little over a week.  After that I would be in charge of 5 college kids in Viet Nam for 5 weeks.  I was in charge of running a summer camp program and making sure none of them died.  And I was leaving a few days early so I could attend my best friend from college’s wedding.  As a bridesmaid.  Just keep that in mind…

So I managed to deal with the pain till Monday.  I called my dentist and since it was an emergency, they fit me in during lunch hour.   I saw a new dentist and see looked at it and took x-rays.  Because it had been dead for so long it became brittle and cracked all the way up to the root.  A cap would have prevented this from happening (they NEVER told me that!!!) The only thing they could do was take it out.  She tried to take it out but couldn’t.  I was full of Novocain and at one point she had the tooth in pliers and was trying to pull it out.  I had been back there for a couple of hours and finally the receptionist let my mom go back.  She saw the dentist, with a pair of pliers in my mouth trying to pull the tooth out and me with tears running down my face.   She put a stop to what was going on.

The dentist agreed that she couldn’t get it out so she called to the oral surgeon to see if they could squeeze me in.  They could but they were in their other office so we had to drive over there.  No biggie.  While we’re driving the Novocain starts wearing off and my face is throbbing.  Thankfully I got more Novocain once I got there.  They took me back right away but then I could hear some of the techs talking about how they were going to have to stay late because of me.  I was so stressed…I was supposed to be on a plane to CA tomorrow, my face was throbbing and now I had people mad at me.  The tears continued to stream down my face.  Great.  Then the oral surgeon walked in.  It was the guy who had originally done the root canals, the one with no bedside manner.  Lovely…the day just kept getting better and better.  He gave me a bunch of options and told me I should not go to CA or Viet Nam.  I told him I was going and that was that.  So we decided that he would pull the tooth and then pack it with cadaver bone.  He said he would have to let it heal before he could put a post in for an implant.  At that point I didn’t care, I just needed to be able to catch a plane.  I remember the oral surgeon being very unhelpful.  Needless to say I was NOT going to go back to him.

So eventually he gets to work.  He tried a few things but I guess part of the tooth had somehow fused to my jaw bone.  He eventually got it out but not before he had to take a few swings at it with a mallet.  And not a little mallet…it was a good size mallet.  A BIG mallet.  A BIG, RUBBER mallet.  No cool.  But he got the tooth out, packed me full of cadaver bone and stitched it up.  And he wanted to see me on Wednesday. 

So when I got home I called my contact person and told her what happened.  She was so happy that I was still going to go that they no problem with me arriving to Team Leader training late.  I changed my flight to Thursday and tried not to stress about missing training.  After all, I had NO CLUE what I was doing and I was feeling very inadequate. 

With the team at training in CA, June 2007

I got to rest on Tuesday and then had to see the dentist and the oral surgeon on Wednesday.  The dentist made a flipper (or a flapper?  I can never remember…the fake tooth thing to wear so people don’t know you’re missing a tooth) for me to wear.   I LOVE LOVE LOVE my dentist and they were so good to me.  The one with the pliers?  She was let go not long after but the other dentists in the practice are amazing.  So amazing that when the oral surgeon didn’t like how close the flipper was to the gum and he ground it down so it wouldn’t touch my gums, they were mad and made him pay to replace it.  I just pocketed the money cause I wasn’t going to wear the annoying flipper anyway!

I smiled like this a lot before I got used to missing a tooth and was still very self conscious! If you know me at all you know that this is NOT my normal smile.

So off to training I went, still sore and on drugs.  I was nervous and this didn’t help!  My team was great though and took my missing tooth in stride.  I remember learning some dances (like chicken dance) and a lot of them had jumping in them.  Without thinking I would jump along until I started feeling something gritty in my mouth.  Yup, the cadaver bone was coming out.  It was so gross.

With my team in Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam

The summer went well.  I refused to wear the flipper cause I couldn’t talk well with it on and I wasn’t supposed to wear it to eat.  It was easier and more comfortable to not wear it.  It turned out to be a good thing actually.  In Viet Nam many people don’t have great teeth.  There isn’t a high priority on dental health.  I never thought much about it but I had more than one student in the camp program say to  me that I had a beautiful smile even without the tooth and how it made them feel better to know that not all Americans have perfect teeth!  Some of them are very self conscious about their teeth but I was able to help them feel better.  It really wasn’t all about me.  I loved knowing that God used this experience to help others!

And I made back in time for the wedding.  I feel bad cause in all the wedding pictures I’m missing a tooth!  I wore the flipper but I think it looked so bad.  My friend was so gracious and was just happy I was there!  Thankfully you can’t really tell in most of the photos since they are further away.

Missing a tooth and wearing the flipper at the wedding.

And it’s not over yet…at least the worst is over!

Teeth Part 1

I’ve had several hits on my blog by people looking for info about missing teeth, implants and fake teeth.  I’ve never told my whole teeth story (I gave a condensed version on the post 64) so for those with inquiring minds, here’s the whole story.

Background:

I guess you could say my teeth adventure started when I was 9.  I was riding my bike and grumpily wearing my helmet.  I was riding out of our driveway and instead of staying on the pavement I rode up the grassy embankment like I had done a dozen times before.  This time I fell and hit my front right tooth on the sidewalk, cutting my lip in the process.  There was tons of blood but I managed to not get any on the floor as I ran into the bathroom…I remember be proud of that.  Mom took me to the dentist and he told me I killed the tooth.  Killing a tooth=a root canal.  The root canal happened and I never really thought much about it after that except that every once in a while the dentist would mention that the tooth was gray and did I want to do something about it?  It was gray but I didn’t think it was very noticeable.  And since doing something about it meant putting a cap on it, I was ok leaving it as is.  They told me, more than once, that the cap was cosmetic.  A different dentist later on told me I should have a cap put on but never told me why.  This is important, as it comes into play later.

Fast forward a few years to when I was 12ish.  I think it was the summer before 7th grade.  My cousin was visiting from CA and I went on a Whale Watch with my Aunt and my cousin…other might have been along but I don’t remember.  I do remember that it was dark as the boat was pulling it, there was a thunder and lightening storm and I had a toothache.  It just kept getting worse.  It got so bad that the right side of my face started to swell.  It got pretty big.  Mom decided that that was bad and off to the dentist we went.  It turns out that the root canal had some kind of infection.  So they put a wick in to drain it…basically they put some gauze in my gums.  The good news is that it worked and my face returned to normal.  The bad news is that the infection ate into the bone and killed the tooth to the right of it.  Guess what that means?  If you guessed a root canal, you were right!  Cause dead tooth=root canal. 

July 2000 with my two dead teeth and my two day old nephew

So now I’ve had two root canals.  I still didn’t think much about them until I was living in China in 2002.  Then I had what looked like a zit on top of the scar on my gums from the drain.  It was a little hard to do anything about since I was living in China so I waited until Mid-Year. While I was in Thailand I went to the dentist.  He said it was an infection and that he could take care of it.  Due to my schedule and the fact that I didn’t want to have oral surgery in another country without my mother, I decided to wait.  Yes, I was 22 by that time but oral surgery (to me!) is a big deal and recovering in a hotel room just didn’t seem like fun.  I had great friends that would have taken good care of me but I wanted my mom.

With my friend’s grandma at a Starbucks in Beijing, 2004. Still have two dead teeth.

So I waited till I got home and I went to an endodontist.  He was AMAZING even if he did cut open my gums and clean out the root canal while I was awake.  All I felt was pressure.  I didn’t love the guy who had done my two root canals…he was not very nice and could use a little work on his bedside manner.  But this guy?  I would go back to him in a heartbeat if I needed another root canal.  He was so good.  The part that hurt the most is when he removed the stitches. 

Memorial Day, 2007 with two dead teeth that in matter of months would be no more…Can you see my gray tooth?

Now you know about 1/2 of my oral history.  Aren’t you excited?  Don’t worry, there’s more to come and it’s even more fun!

A preview of what’s to come:

June 2007…only one dead tooth now…