a little razzle dazzle

Jessica is my baby. She may be 13 (sometimes going on 18) but she is my youngest and forever holds that spot of baby in my eyes. For her older siblings there was always a day, usually the first time I saw them after the next child was born, where they seemingly grew up overnight. A moment when they went from babyhood straight into toddler-hood in the blink of an eye. And since Jess is the youngest she never had the moment in my mind. She was always the youngest of the bunch bring up the rear of the growth train.
I hadn't intended for today to be such a big day for us. Yesterday I finally stopped procrastinating and got all the things we needed to get together for the consultation with the orthodontist. We had started this process in October but, we had a new local insurance that wanted us to change orthodontists and there were xrays to be done. Our insurance approved ortho didn't speak English as well and there was a difference of opinion on how best to treat Jessica's issues...which are eerily like my own...pull tons of teeth and push it all back, or pull the lower jaw forward to make the jaw aligned and create space. It took about two seconds for me to vote for option two. After having tons of my own teeth pulled and pushed back during three years of braces only to live with perpetual jaw pain from TMJ. I signed her up for option two....in my head. But making the appointment with our previous ortho and getting there was what was holding us up.
I love Spanish medicine. Say what you want about the advancements in US medicine. We show up for our appointment and the ortho, after an absence of several months, and even though it would have set her back in her day, she was willing to put the braces on Jessica yesterday. I told her it wasn't necessary to ruin her whole day and so she scheduled us for this morning, a day incidentally that she has set aside for paperwork, to get Jessica started. She might have been concerned about still catching Jess in the middle of her growth spurt. But hey, she is still growing so we haven't surpassed it yet. She is just a baby.

I love Jessica's smile. Jessica earned the nickname "sunshine" when she was very young. Her optimism and energy often added the sun to my days. And she is taking to braces in her usual, glass half full kind of way. When she looked in the mirror at all the metal she only grinned larger and said, "that's a lot of bling."
Yes, it is babe....yes it is.