Teeth!!!!!

Ben's teeth are doing very well.  He is about to lose several of his molars and so they are going to put a wire in his lower jaw to keep his teeth spread apart when they fall out so that it keeps his teeth from crowding.
Maggie is now in the SLU orthodontics system.  I took Ben to get a check-up on his teeth and they took a look at Maggie at the same time.  As we suspected, her teeth would be fine if she would just stop sucking her fingers!!!  If we don't do something soon, she will do permanent damage to her bone structure in her mouth.  There are very few things we can do about it.  They can put something in her mouth or they can put a brace on her arm at night, or both.  Not sure if anything will work, she is pretty tenacious about doing it-every time she thinks we are not looking in fact!!!  Still, she is now registered to do phase 1 of the SLU treatment and we will see how she can do.
Some of the fall-out from her moving her front teeth include the fact that she has now developed a lisp with her speech and that she is constantly making a sucking sound, which I think is because her lips aren't meeting any more & she can't swallow properly.  We have had her speech and language evaluated at school again because I still feel that there are some things that she says that I just don't understand at all.  She also says completely the opposite to what she means sometimes.  They said that essentially the only sound she doesn't make properly is the "r" sound (she says woom instead of room).  Her language isn't impaired enough to qualify for anything under special school district, but they did say that they think she should be completely evaluated in a year or so because it is likely that her language skills will impact her more as the curriculum becomes more advanced.  For now, I told them that I don't want her pulled out of the classroom any more than she is already.  She also needs to be exposed to the regular classroom and to the other kids.
Oh, and while we are on the subject of speech/language/interactions with other kids, I will mention that Maggie has developed quite a colourful language!!!  She is quite notorious for her cuss words & apparently told one of her friends that she's allowed to cuss and we said it was OK!!!!  Her favourite word is the 'B' words (as Ben & Maggie both refer to it), but she got in trouble at school the other day because she got caught saying "F you" to someone.  Every day brings something new.....