It all began when I overheard the following statement: “Okay Porter, now don’t scream when I do this.”

Watching Porter’s front teeth twist and turn over the last weeks has been an infinite source of family entertainment. He has been guaranteed that at least one of us throughout the course of the day will walk up to him and ask, “hasn’t one of those teeth fallen out YET?” Myself included – which you think I’d be a little more sensitive about considering I was asked “haven’t had that baby YET?!” about 600 bazillion times with both of my insanely overdue pregnancies. But I digress.

So ANYWAYS, teeth. Loose. Insanely loose and crooked. There were days when I would look in the rear-view mirror of the car and see my son’s face with a single tooth resting atop his lower lip. Kinda like this (but in place of the bird is his nasty smelling blanket):

I tried to do some documenting the evolution of this process on my own:

Flash forward to yesterday.

Stella had finally reached her limit. Action needed to be taken. And big sisters can be very persuasive. Her plan involved one packet of purple embroidery thread from her friendship bracelet kit, one remote control all-terrain vehicle, and a whole lot of trial and error. Once she had successfully a.) gotten Porter’s buy-in, b.) figured out how to successfully attach the string to the tooth and the remote control car, and c.) gunned the car with just the right amount of slack in the line, she achieved her goal:

I still laugh each and every time I look at this photo. The blood. The look of victory on Stella’s face. The look of I-Don’t-Know-How-She-Convinced-Me-This-Was-A-Good-Idea on Porter’s face. It pretty much tells the entire story all by itself.