Marissa's New Addition

Here are some pictures of Marissa.

The following pictures remind me that Marissa always has someone to play with. It's hard for me to even remember a time when she was alone. She plays so well with Alex when Erin is at school and follows right along with whatever the other kids are playing. She has a lot of little friends too. She is such a fun girl. I am so glad that my kids get along so well together. They are seriously such a joy to watch.

Marissa is such a funny and unique child. She has her own way of doing things that just crack me up. Even the way she walks in unique. I can't describe it. She has become pretty particular about what she wears. One day she wanted me to pick something and everything I picked had something wrong with it. "No, that one's too small for me. No, that one doesn't have anything on it. No, that one is a T-shirt. No, that one is too big for me. No, that one is too ugly for me. No, that one is Connor's (referring to her purple stretch pants with the jeweled princess crown on it)." What she usually picks would be a bit of an embarrassment to me if I ever stopped to think about it. Not to mention the hair-do's that she pulls out as soon as she walks in the door and the missing tooth. Sometimes she looks a little too much like an orphan, but with her new addition, hopefully things will change.

That's right, Marissa got her new tooth! Here she is a couple of weeks before she got it. I loved the picture so I photoshopped a tooth in (although I left the other ones toothless).

This one is now hanging on our wall. A little less orphan-like, right? (aside from the fact that she is sitting on a trash can--she loved being Oscar the Grouch).Here's a picture of the girls with twin missing teeth back in December. They were like this for such a long time. It was kind of funny.Here's a shot of the new tooth, no Photoshop necessary. It's beautiful! It's a little more white than her actual teeth, but unless you are looking you'd never know the difference. The drawbacks of the tooth are that she has a little trouble saying the s sound, she can't chew gum or eat anything sticky, and that insurance didn't cover it. Ouch! But the benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks. First, she looks like a normal 2 year old again. Second, it is a space holder so her other teeth don't move into the gap. Third, and maybe most amazingly, it is helping her not suck her thumb! This was an unintended but very welcomed consequence of the new tooth. This girl has sucked her thumb almost constantly since she was a couple months old so I thought she'd be sucking till she was 10. Really, when she went to sleep, when she watched movies, in the car, in nursery, all the time. When I was at the dentist I happened to see a paper about thumb appliances that get your kid to stop sucking. Marissa's tooth is almost exactly the same thing as the thumb appliance because it hooks onto the back molars, has a wire behind the teeth and has another piece at the back where the thumb would go. I am so happy it is accomplishing more than one thing. She really has been doing well with not sucking. With the help of some Strawberry Shortcake band aids around her thumb to remind her, I think she will be thumb free soon. Who would have thought she'd stop sucking her thumb before she became potty trained?

Oh, I just thought of something else. She says she wants to be a dump truck when she grows up. Not the driver, the dump truck. This will work very well with Alex's future profession, I'm sure. He has dreamed of being a garbage man for a long time now, and not the smoking kind.

Anyway, we love this girl so much and are so grateful for all the fun and good things she brings to our family and to the world!