Teething BITES!

Well, here we are at 7 months with one tooth who has shown himself to us on the bottom left middle and a tooth trying to get his way out on the top right middle.  Kind of surprising seeing how normally the bottom 2 come first.  My little guy is just proclaiming that he will be doing things in life his way!  :)

I sure don't like the teething process.  It breaks my heart for him.  Granted, there's mass amounts of drool pouring out of his little smiler all the time and he is gnawing on everything-kinda resembling a beaver!, but the part that is the worst is the pain side of it. 

When Carter started getting his first tooth, I was back and forth on whether I thought he was teething or fighting a cold.  Turns out I think it was a bit of both.  He had an extremely runny, stuffy nose for about 10 days.  Towards the end, he developed a low fever (about 101) and had a few difficuly nights.  My little sleep-through-the-night guy had me visitng his room about 6-10 times a night.  It broke my heart because there is nothing that can truly be done to help.  Yes, we givve him the cold teethers, a wet washcloth to suck on, tylenol to help the pain and lower the fever, but in the end, they are all temporary fixes.  It's just one of those rites of passages a baby has to go through to get bigger.

The bottom tooth has peeked through!  This was yesterday before the fever. 

Last night was round two of this.  Actually, it started mid afternoon.  My mom was watching Carter so I could go clear out my old classroom of some of my items and she said he woke up after about 45 min from a nap (which is usually 1 1/2 - 2 hours) and was screaming.  Carter isn't a big cryer, much less screamer, and definitely doesn't usually take much to calm down if he is upset.  She said nothing was working.  Not feeding him, holding him, leaving him be, distracting him...he was unhappy.  Neither of us quite knew why.  Until....I put him down for another nap and mom and I were working on organizing my closet.  When I got him up, he was very hot to touch.  The fever was back.  The drool was flowing.  The tears were pouring.  He's teething again. 

Mom left and we were waiting for Zach to get home from his business trip.  The weather in Dallas had delayed him hours and hours but he thought the likelihood of getting delayed was small.  I don't like staying alone overnight (and haven't yet since Carter was born, call me a wimp, I know!) so I was praying Zach was getting home.  He called and said it seemed as though they were going to leave.  PHEW!  I wasn't looking forward to being home alone, with a teething baby, who has a fever and is miserable.  Even though I would insist on doing the night time tending to Carter, it's still comforting knowing someone else is there to help. 

My poor guy screaming from his pain. 

We sent this to Daddy to convince him to do all he could to get home!

Tough Teething.  Blah.