You chewed on a what??!!

Keegan is getting in a lot of teeth. I remember being worried when he didn't have any teeth at 9 months or so. I guess that was the greater-power-that-be's blessing on him. If he had gotten teeth earlier I think he would have knocked them all out between 9-12 months during his adventures in walking, running, scaling bookcases, and surmounting coffee tables.

So now Keegan is getting a lot of teeth, and he is getting them all at once. Truth be told it kind of sucks. He will get crabby for "no good reason" and we can't figure out what to do with him. He knows (and frequently employs) sign language for "eat", "milk", "sleepy", "all done", and "more". Surprisingly these signs actually cover a lot of ground. Unsurprisingly he has a bit of trouble conveying "darnit Mom my teeth really hurt and it totally sucks and I want some Tylenol and something to chew on". So it is kind of left up to us to figure it out.

He makes it pretty easy to figure out though. Sometimes he fingers his mouth and whines (similar to when he tried hot sauce) or he chews on things. By things I mean everything. Nothing is safe from this kid's teeth. Some notable things he has chewed on are: chairs, kitty scratching post, mom, dad, kitty, doggy, dog bone, dog bowl, rocks, his own fingers (followed by crying), and, well, the list could go on and on.

Unfortunately he took teething on foreign objects to new and embarrassing heights when I picked him up from daycare on Wednesday last week. Keegan walks out of daycare on his own. We have a ritual. He has to stop and make the water fountain work, then we wave at the front desk ladies, then Keegan pushes on the door and opens it (with a bit of invisible mommy help), next we stop to watch the wind chimes, finally we get to the car. When we get to the car Keegan likes to pet the hub caps (yes, I know this is odd but he *really* enjoys it) while I throw my purse in the front seat and then in the car he goes.

Well, Wednesday started out like any other day. Keegan went to touch the hub caps on the car and I threw my purse in the car. I looked away maybe 1/60th of a second and when I looked back he was chewing on the tire of the car. I mean talk about something that's been places. He is gnawing on the tire like it is the best thing in the world. Of course he is gnawing on the front tire and we are parked in front the big picture window in front of daycare, so everyone can see him eating our tire. I am torn between the horror of what he is doing and the humor behind it. I am like "Keegan, yucky, yucky, chewing on tires is yucky." So, Keegan, if you ever read this know that you learned one important life lesson from your mother "Chewing on tires is yucky!"

So you are probably wondering if this boy has any teethers. Of course, he has many, but other things are way more interesting to chew on. Today (when I was pulling stuff out of the freezer for dinner) he ran over and pulled a frozen chicken taquito out of the box. After checking to see that taquitos are precooked, I let him go at it. I guess frozen taquitos make awesome teethers. Keegan has 3-4 molars coming in and these seem to be the pain culprits. Hopefully we will get through this without Keegan finding something else that is horribly wrong to chew on.