Dental sentiment

You guys, Duchess only has six baby teeth left, crowded in among the new, comically giant choppers. The orthodontist thinks they'll be gone within nine months.* I felt unexpectedly stricken by this news. In some deep part of my brain, I feel that when she loses that last bony vestige of babyhood, she will officially Not Be My Baby Any More. This is a ridiculous notion, and I really can't even pretend that I'm enthusiastic about infancy in general,* so it's silly that I'm pining for it in any way. It's surely more complicated than that - grief for my own looming death, probably, plus my anxiety about my girls growing up in the world. She's got a big adult life ahead of her, and those old tiny teeth were obviously not up to the job.

* Skipper has always been dentally precocious, losing her first tooth (the natural way, I mean - she knocked one out at age two) at age four. She is still in the normal range, though. And, as you may recall, that's pretty much my parenting goal - keep things within the normal range.
**It's not that I dislike babies. It's just not my favorite part of people's lives.