goodbye Buckwheat

Someone got a hold of Liam's loose tooth Sunday night.

(And by "someone", I mean ME.)

I just couldn't stand looking at his tooth hanging out of his mouth any longer. My first unsuccesful attempt to pull it out produced a small squeal of pain (and a small amount of blood). A firmer grasp for my second attempt, a sharp tug, and it was out. Liam jumped away from me, holding his mouth and saying, "Just tell me first BEFORE you do it." and then looked over to see his tooth sitting in the palm of my hand. He was THRILLED at the size of the gap.

"Now I have a place for my straw!"

No kidding! Look at that hole! If his other front tooth falls out anytime soon, he'll be able to eat a burger WITHOUT EVEN OPENING HIS MOUTH.

Not wanting for Simon to feel left out, I let him mug a bit for the camera. Sherbet face and all.

Take a look at his bite in the first picture. See how off it is? His front teeth cross almost in an 'X' but not even in the center.  He's only three years old (his birthday is tomorrow *ack*), but I can tell it's already affecting his speech. He really struggles with 's' and 'c' because his teeth don't line up properly in the front. Try it. Say 'ssssssssss' normally, now shift your lower jaw to one side and try. It comes out more like 'shshshshsh' or 'chchchchch'. I know that HE can tell he's not doing it right because he flat out refuses to read* words with an 's' in them. He's always said his 's's strangely, but we always thought it was cute. They came out like an 'x' sound. So 'eggs' was 'eggx', 'hand' were 'handx', 'kids' were 'kidx'. Now it's kind of making sense.

Think I should be worried about this yet?

*I'm slowly going through the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons -which I LOVE and HIGHLY recommend- with Simon whenever he shows interest. Liam was doing about 5 lessons a day for the first month or so, but is now down to one a day since they are more difficult. Simon usually asks to "do school" two or three times a week, and this is the book we do together. Liam has made AMAZING progress and gone from being easily frustrated with reading, to being able to read short stories without any help. Simon (a day shy of three years old) can read simple words like: mat, sat, read, at, see, me, eat, meat, it, sit, etc. Except that he makes me do all the words with 's' in them.