Beware of Blunt Toddler

So Natalie thought this story was so funny that I had to post it on the blog. Some are already familiar with this tale, others are in for a laugh.

It has come to my (through Natalie and a sharp elbow to the ribs at 3.14 am) attention that I grind my teeth at night. Not a light grinding, that would be to half-hearted. No we are talking about a fully on hardcore teeth grinding. The kind Arnold Schwarzeneager would do in his 80's action movies as he delivered poorly written lines in an even poorer version of the English language.

My teeth grinding was so bad it woke up Natalie several times in the night. This is not easy seeing that Natalie is 90% deaf in her right ear so she sleeps with her "good" ear in the pillow to block out any unwanted noises. My teeth grinding was so bad that the noise was heard by a sleeping woman in the ear that she is 90% deaf in. That is loud.

So at the beginning of this wonderful new year I decide to buy one of those nighttime mouth guards that you boil and mold to your mouth to help with grinding. Now I don't make teeth grinding noises, but if you listen carefully you can hear a high pitched squeaking noise of me trying to grind my teeth. It is almost as bad. I kid you not it sounds like to mice reenacting the classic fight scene from the 80's movie "They Live". You know, the fight scene that lasts for 20 minutes straight.

Warning: the following part of this story acknowledges something that we all know happens, but none of us admit to... Morning Breath. There...I said it.

So as per Madelyn's routine, one morning a week or so back, she gets into bed with us and as usual her very fine, baby hair is all full of static and floating around.

Natalie, half asleep, tells me to push it out of her face. Nothing. That hair wants to fly as bad as the Wright Brothers. It was going every which way.

So Natalie tells me to do the next best thing, something that every mother on this great planet has done to every one of their children at least once in their life....

I licked my hand and slid he hair back across the top of her head.

*Now I would like to plug the Dentist's Night Guard. It is a wonderful mouth guard that helps the annoying concrete-grinding-concrete sound of my teeth grinding to sound more like two mice having a battle royale in my mouth. The one problem that arises from using a mouth guard (it's not looking funny. It actually looks dead sexy and women love it.) is that it traps saliva in between your teeth and you can't flush it out like you normally do while you sleep. Thus you get a super concentrated form of morning breath the likes of which will peel the paint off walls.*

Having given little thought to any of this, I settle back down, going back to sleep. Proud of the job I had done to help my child fight the problem that is "fly-away hair", I was suddenly awoken to the small, groggy voice of my daughter looking at Natalie and asking her rather bluntly, "Mommy. What's that smell?!"

That would be my breath Maddie. More precisely, my unrecycled spit... all over the top of your head.





-Shane