Back to School

Well, we've survived the first four weeks of Grade 1 without any dramas. Homework and the learning of sight words has commenced, and home readers are now being brought home for reading practice. PE, Library and Music specialty classes have also started, as has Junior Choir practice. Cheyenne has settled into the routine fairly well, and even with the new earlier starts, we've only been a little bit late once. She loves sitting at her brand new desk and pink swivel chair in her bedroom to do her homework. So far, so good.



She was ready early for school on the first day. We found her classroom, met her new teacher Miss Wilton, and looked for her name on the desks to find out which group she was in. She loved being able to put her stationery things into the tidy tray of her desk, as they hadn't had allocated desks in Prep.

Another cause for excitement on the first day of school was that another wobbly tooth fell out. My little Gummy Bear is definitely keeping the tooth fairy in business! The good news is that just this last week, her missing top front tooth has finally made its appearance! (Typically, only AFTER I'd made her an appointment with my dentist, but isn't that just the way life goes, lol?)

Gummy Bear

♫ ♪ ♫ All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth ♫ ♪ ♫

Well, Christmas has come and gone and we're still waiting for Cheyenne's second front tooth to come through at the top. Her two top front teeth (the ones which were wearing away at an alarming angle) fell out within a couple of weeks of each other, during the last term of school last year. Her left-hand side adult tooth has cut through and grown nicely, but there's still no sign of its mate. To make matters worse, the baby tooth on the other side of the gap has recently fallen out as well, so Cheyenne has a rather gummy (although cute) smile. This of course, has given rise to her new nickname, "Gummy Bear".

She's told me that even though she likes the nickname, I am only allowed to call her that until her new teeth grow in. Fair enough, since she won't be gummy anymore.

Christmas was a fairly quiet, family affair once again. Lunch with my mum and brother, dinner with Steve's parents and two of his three brothers and their families. On Boxing Day we went up to visit some friends who live the other side of Gympie, and stayed the night at their place.

Steve found out about his work closing down between Christmas and New Year a little too late for us to book anything, so we didn't go away anywhere for a holiday. We spent New Year's Eve with some friends and Steve actually managed to see in the New Year for a change, lol.

This past weekend we spent Friday and Saturday nights in the annexe of Steve's parents' caravan down at the Broadwater Tourist Park. Cheyenne spent the entire weekend, playing with some of her cousins, either in the pool or at the beach, and has really gone quite brown. She already had a cute little oval shaped tan mark on her back from her bathing costume after spending so much time in our pool over the holidays.

Now there's only one week to go until the holidays are over and Cheyenne starts Grade 1. Time to buy new school shoes and start going to bed early to practice for next week. The earlier start time is going to be a shock to her system (not to mention mine as well). Guess I'd better start covering schoolbooks and labelling everything so that I'm not doing it all the night before.

Cheyenne has just had her hair cut nice and short so she doesn't start the new year looking scruffy.

There goes another one!

Well, last night Cheyenne lost her second tooth! In typical Cheyenne style, this is happening with as little fuss as when she first cut her teeth as a baby. (We were very lucky with her when she first cut her teeth - no inconsolable crying, no temperatures, no sleepless nights...)

Both times now she has been eating, and she has stopped chewing, calmly handed the tooth over and continued eating. Steve and I are amazed that she has somehow managed not to swallow them.

So far there are no more loose teeth - but if the process continues at this rate then I fear that the Global Financial Crisis will hit Fairyland and the Tooth Fairy will suffer her own 'credit crunch' !

Once again , Cheyenne was excited to receive money from the Tooth Fairy. "Look what she left me!" When Steve asked her how she knew that it wasn't a he, Cheyenne informed us that "Only boys have boy tooth fairies"

So now you know!

...Gone !

Cheyenne went to the shops with Steve last night, and when they got home she was bursting with excitement because her tooth had fallen out while she was eating a Milky Way.

We hunted all around her room for the little organza pouch that I'd told her she could use to keep her tooth safe under her pillow, ready for the Tooth Fairy... but naturally, in the course of the last week, she has managed to lose it, and a full scale search turned up nothing. We settled on leaving the tooth on top of her bookcase so that the Tooth Fairy could be sure to find it.

You'd think it'd be relatively easy to photograph the gap in her teeth, but no! "Smile nicely for Mummy so I can take a photo of your teeth" She gives me a wild-eyed-mad-scientist grin. "No, a nice smile. No, not the fish-lips, either, I need to see your teeth!" OK, so then we have the problem that I'd prefer not to have permanent photographic evidence that her top teeth are wearing away (I may have mentioned that in the previous post), so I try to have her smile without exposing her top teeth. This results in several more tragically ugly faces, with lips stretched tight. "Relax, smile nicely, and maybe try to open your mouth a bit more like you're about to take a bite of something...?"

As always happens when you are trying to get a shot 'just right', the batteries are nearly flat and you can't just keep clicking away in the hope you get a decent one. How much do you hate digital camera lag ? I do. Immensely. She'd finally get the smile I wanted, but by the time the shot had actually been taken she'd moved again. I give up!

This is the best of a bad lot. OK, it's not all that bad on the whole, but it is definitely blurry around the teeth, which were, after all, the main focus of the shot. It does the job though, and you can sort of see that the tooth to the left (her left, that is) of the one she lost is also a bit loose, and is no longer facing straight.

Hopefully the middle top teeth are next. Then I'll let her smile with all her teeth (or gaps) showing in photos.

Going, Going...

I just had to make mention of Cheyenne's very first loose tooth! It's all very exciting!

I first noticed it yesterday afternoon - only because it had an odd translucent look to it. She hadn't even realised, but ever since I pointed it out she has been poking at it constantly with her tongue.

She was rather worried that it might fall out during the night and somehow get lost under her bed... or worse, that she might swallow it like one of her friends from Prep did. She was reassured by the fact that it was still safely in her mouth this morning. "But what if someone bumps me at school?", she wants to know.

I guess she is worried that if it gets lost then the tooth fairy won't bring her any money! Now there's a thought... I wonder what the tooth fairy's going rate is these days.

I had hoped that she would lose one or both or her front top teeth first (since they are wearing away at an alarming rate), but instead it is one of the bottom teeth. It's a good sign though, since surely the rest will follow relatively soon after, and maybe she will have lost the two worn ones well and truly before they wear away completely.