12.10.11 - Kyron's New Look

It happens to all kids, but for sentimental parents it's sort of a rite of passage from little kid to......not so little any more. Or in the case of Kyron, our youngest, it means the baby in the family is not as much baby as he once was. Oh yeah.... I'm talking about that big life moment when every kid loses their front two teeth and spend the next few weeks with that cute toothless grin.

For the last week or so, Kyron has been complaining about his teeth getting loose, but showed a reluctance to take an active role in helping the process along.  As timing would be, he had a dentist appointment scheduled for Monday and the dentist helped the process along by pulling one of the two loose teeth. The look was completed late Friday night when his second tooth fell out, widening the gap and completing the toothless smile.  Immediately, he looked different and it began to set in on Marcy and I how our little boy will never look the same again.

We were certainly familiar with this transition in appearance from the previous three kids (although Caeden's occurred much earlier in his life due to a crash landing off a play structure - that's a story for another time), but Kyron is the youngest.  With each inch he grows, tooth he looses, and toy he stops playing with there looms, what feels like, a finality to the situation.  A stage of our life as parents ceases and we journey forward, not to repeat that stage again with any others.  For the most part, that's a good thing (i.e. diapers and potty training), but there is still a little bit of sadness in me that Kyron's smile - complete with his baby teeth that could light up a room - will never be seen again.  Out of that sadness, however, springs excitement and anticipation gained from past experiences with three other room filling smiles, that Kyron's NEW smile will be bigger and better - no doubt meant for bigger rooms and bigger moments, just like the rest of him.