Don't Bite My Butt

A few days ago, Ada showed signs of teething. She has twenty teeth, which is a full set, but her back molars must have been bugging her. She was running around chewing on everything in sight. The edge of our square ceramic dinner bowls and the dishwasher racks offered some relief, to my surprise. She was like a new puppy without a chew toy and I was a broken record stuck on the same phrase all morning, "Not in your mouth, Ada." I finally realized that she needed something designed to relieve her teething urge to chew things when I was doing dishes at the sink and turned around to find her teeth clenched around the metal button on the back pocket of my jeans. It was a scene straight out of Madagascar where Alex the lion bites into Marty the zebra's backside after missing a few meals and Marty turns around while Alex's mouth is still on his butt and says, "Alex, you're biting my butt." I was a bit more annoyed when I said, "Ada, stop biting my button."

Luckily, our friend Rosalyn had just given us a pacifier holder for Iain that she made and I had recently scored a free teething pacifier with a flat plastic piece on it instead of a nipple. I put the two pieces together, attached it to Ada's pajamas and her "bite everything in sight" phase quickly passed.

Moral of the story: Once your child has teeth, store the teething toys instead of passing them on. There might be a time for them to resurface.