Dentistry Bites

It appears to be Tooth Week here at the Bear household: Ellie has officially popped out both bottom teeth and is emerging from the throes of teething, and Bear and I made the semi-annual pilgrimage to the dentist for our checkups. As such, I'd like to take this opportunity to air a few grievances against the dental profession as a whole:

1) Bear has long felt that the whole "every six months" thing is a giant scam, and that as long as you take reasonably good care of your teeth, there's no reason to go more than once a year. Proving his point, neither of us had any new cavities, despite the fact that a) he hasn't gone in 18 months, and b) I've crashed many a night since Ellie was born without brushing my teeth first, with no ill effects whatsoever. Take that, dentists! I may just stop brushing altogether and see what happens. Just kidding.

2) Every time either one of us goes in, we get the, "You still have your wisdom teeth?!" speech. "You really need to have those removed," they always say, "before they start to cause problems." Then they hand us a quote for nearly $1,000 and ask when we'd like to schedule the procedure. Um, never. They're not bothering me. Again, this is a giant fraud perpetrated by the dental profession. It would be like if every time you went to a doctor, they said, "You still have your appendix/tonsils/left kidney?! Tsk, tsk. We're going to need to take those out before they cause problems!" Whatever.

3) Is there anyone in the universe whose gums do NOT bleed when a dental assistant with the all the gentleness of Sweeney Todd saws into them repeatedly with floss? Or when said assistant scrapes them with an instrument that all-too-closely resembles a fish hook? If so, I'd like to meet this person, because I think s/he may have magical powers I'd like to take advantage of. Otherwise, I will continue to believe this is yet another scam, allowing them to then deliver their patented "Tsk, tsk...your gums are bleeding because you don't floss well enough" speech. And never mind the fact that I never, ever floss. That has nothing to do with it.

Anyway, moving along...

Yesterday, Bear and I took the girls to the lakeside restaurant where we got married and took our picture under the arch for the 5th year in a row. Keira was thrilled that they had multi-colored tortilla chips...ah, to be so easily impressed!


Bear took a rare pic of Ellie and me together, to show off her cute sun hat:

And now, behold, five years' worth of married Bearhood...

August 2004 (our wedding...duh):


1-year anniversary:


2-year anniversary (I was 7 months pregnant with Keira):

3-year anniversary (introducing Cub #1!):


4-year anniversary (I was about 8 minutes pregnant with Ellie):


5-year anniversary, this week (introducing Cub #2!):

And here are a few other random pics...

Giggle-bug:


I never get tired of "bite-choo up" Bug:

Super-sad Bug!

This is Keira with her "heart box," an idea she blatantly ripped off from "Ni Hao, Kai-lan," except Keira's is actually a Christmas box she found in my closet...so don't sue her, Noggin:

Oh, and good news: after her 8th blood draw (since it turned out that the tech I spoke to last time was wrong, and having blood drawn from her heel vs. her arm had nothing to do with her weird results...my apologies to all the lab techs I referred to as "morons"!), Ellie's TSH numbers are finally normal and that whole saga has been put to rest. Yippee!