Pearly whites!

The gentlemen had their second ever dentist appointment this morning.  They both did great!  The only problem that arose was their thumb/finger sucking habits are causing problems with their teeth.  Boo!  T sucks his pointer and middle fingers, and M sucks his thumb.  It's interesting to see how sucking the different fingers is actually affecting their teeth differently.  For the life of me I can't remember what she called the misalignments, but I could definitely see what she was talking about when I looked into their mouths.

Her suggestion was to get my hands on this special fingernail polish that tastes gross so they just don't want to suck their fingers.  I decided that first, I'd rather work on being consistent with reminders.  "Boys no sucking on your fingers, please!"

We went to the grocery store after their appointment, which put them way past their nap time.  So the usual pattern would be that they fall asleep in the car.  But that pattern also involves assuming the position.  T's fingers go straight in his mouth and he tugs on his ear with his other hand.  M's thumb goes straight in.  They seemed confused by me asking them to not suck on their fingers and ended up staying awake the entire ride home because of it.  Selfish me was actually fine with that because if they do fall asleep in the car, once we get home they refuse to continue napping and we end up with a very rough afternoon.  As soon as we got home, both boys went down for a nice long nap.  And I'm sure they sucked on their beloved fingers as soon as I shut the door.  But we have to start somewhere.

In our home, we're of the mindset that we'd like to nurture their behaviors around listening to us before resorting to outside measures (special nail polish, bribery, etc...).  I'm not saying we're perfect.  We have resorted to those kinds of thing with different scenarios, but it's not our first line of defense.  It seems to be paying off too!  In general our boys are good listeners, have a decent grasp of right/wrong and I'm not often dealing with screaming public tantrums.  We have our moments.  They are two after all.  But for our family this parenting method seems to be working.

So we'll see.  I'll share our results as they unfold (along with everything else we're changing in their lives).