3rd Time's.......Expensive!

3 out of our 4 children now have braces on.  Well, 2 of them.  Jared is in between phases waiting for MJ to get hers off in a couple more weeks so that we can try to avoid having the orthodontist just have Nate's check direct deposited into his account.  ha ha ha....sniff sniff boo hoo!  lol  Our little Ethan's mouth was more emergent than putting Jared back in soooo, here's my cutie patooty in braces.  Poor little guy had to endure an expander in his mouth first to get his upper pallet wide enough because he's got a cross bite.  Getting the expander off turned out to be quite traumatic because it just didn't want to come off of his teeth.  It got so bad that I wasn't sure we could finish the process or that the orthodontist would let him come back in to get the braces on.  It was really sad and it made him a bit nervous to go back 1 week later to get the braces on.  I asked him on the way if he ever talked to himself in hard situations.  He didn't know and thought that was a weird question!  We went over some things he could say to himself to get him through the experience because I have found, with him especially, that my support makes things worse.  He feels safe to freak out when I am there to comfort but can hold it together much better if I back way off.  He has an especially hard time with things falling onto his tongue and not knowing what to do with the saliva that builds up.  So when he felt panic rising up he was supposed to say things like, I'm going to be ok, I can breathe, relax, this will be over soon....  He did so great.  Even when they brought out the super sour nasty stuff they use to get your teeth ready for braces he remained calm.  He was so proud of himself and he loves his braces.  We just got them on Wednesday and already the teeth have moved a bunch.  We had to wait to put the bottom ones on for awhile because his bite is too deep so he would end up just biting the bottom brackets off.  Braces are a pain and super expensive but so worth being able to provide a properly functioning mouth with straight teeth that wont cause them major problems in their adulthood.