Clams Made of Corn

Alex has been truly inspired by the movie Milo and Otis. It colors a lot of her day. she hoots like an owl, sometimes insists on being called Milo (she's always the star of the show, no matter what) and even lunch has shades of M and O. Yesterday she was eating corn by the individual kernel by squeezing the centers out. They were juicy bits of corn and kept squirting corn juices everywhere. Inspired by the scene where Otis politely asks a clam about Milo's whereabouts in which the rude clam spits at him, Alex decided that the corn kernels were all rude clams.

Speaking of corn, we've had a bit of a semi-crisis on our hands involving popcorn. Alex has, on several occasions, shared her popcorn with Gabey. Now, I know that popcorn is one of those foods that's infamous for being a choking hazard, so it was under the strictest of supervision that Gabe was allowed to eat some popcorn. I even went so far as to break up individual kernels so that he could enjoy what is apparently his favorite snack ever.

What I didn't think about was the potential for bits to get stuck in his teeth. So of course, while gnawing at the popcorn with his front teeth (what other teeth could he use?) he got a bit of kernel stuck behind on front top tooth. I only noticed it because of his tendency to laugh hysterically while throwing his head, and indeed his entire body, backwards. I saw the rather sizable chunk of kernel and immediately decided that the time had come for him to have his teeth brushed. Well, little did I know that the infernal kernel piece was enormous and in every way impossible to dislodge with a toothbrush. But I tried.

Then, when that didn't work, I thought of those toothbrushes with the rubbery picky bits on the end. Well, after I called the doctor in a panic I thought of this. Anyway, we ran to Target for a toothbrush, only to find that there were none with the rubbery picky bit. I bought some other medieval-looking tooth pickers only to discover that, well, long story short, they didn't work either.

So, taking the nurse's advice, I waited, brushed a bit despite screams of protest, and waited some more. I was told to watch for inflammation, swelling, bleeding, extreme crankiness...we had none of that. So, two weeks later, the kernel still teasing me from behind the tooth, nothing had changed. Except my ever-increasing guilty feelings, of course. Clearly only a bad mommy would let her kid have popcorn permanently lodged behind his tooth.

So, I did what any bad mommy looking to be reformed would do. I dug out the infernal kernel with a fingernail. Oh, there was some serious protesting. There was the instance where the kernel was half out and, due to the wiggly nature of my patient and the imprecise nature of the scraping process, the kernel popped further into his gums. But persistence won, and I was able to remove the mammoth kernel shell from his gums.

As a reward, Gabe was permitted to sit on my lap for a long couple minutes gnawing desperately at his toothbrush. Which he miraculously, despite all the mouth intrusions, still loves. So much so that, when he fell asleep with it, he immediately woke up when I wrestled it from his drooly little fingers. Twice.

In any case, I think I'm back to good mommy status, assuming that his gums haven't inflamed overnight. And there will be a serious ban on popcorn until he has all his teeth and can be trusted to only get shells caught between his teeth where I can easily retrieve them.

Also yesterday I determined that 7 games of Candyland in a row is Alex's limit. Well, certainly my limit if not hers. I was only the Queen of Candyland 4 out of 7 times, but for some inexplicable reason Alex was miffed at the outcome of every game even if she won. Which makes me think that perhaps her grasp of what winning means is still a bit sketchy.