Jackson the Ripper

[Note I had the description of his teeth wrong but it's now corrected.] Jackson has cut 2 new teeth on his bottom jaw, one on either side, in between those 4 middle/front teeth and the 1 back tooth on each side. He had 6 before: 1 - space - 4 - space - 1, and now he's fulled in the spaces, if that makes sense. Make sense? I must be tired because I cannot think how to explain it any better short of linking to a diagram and I'm definitely too tired for that!

Anyway, I don't know if it's the new teeth or just his general gusto for life, but he has recently been ripping into anything and everything with is teeth. A few examples:

* Several nights ago, we were snuggling in the rocking chair and he sweetly (yeah, right) buried his head on my chest. Aw, how cute... RIP! He leans his head back to look me in the eye and grins open-mouth, revealing 3 seed pearls swimming in drool! He wasn't cuddling after all, but rather ripping pearls off my lovely maternity blouse. Thankfully he left the fabric intact.

* The next day, forgetting the pearl incident, I absentmindedly let him have the calculator from my purse. It's a favorite distraction of his in the store, and usually he puts it to his ear like a make-shift cell phone. He amused himself innocently enough with it in the store, pushing buttons and such, but it wasn't until we pulled up at home that I realized he had ripped off each and every number key pad with his teeth and deposited them in his car seat! I thought I got them all picked up, but evidently not: the next day, as we arrived home from an errand, I went to unbuckle him and was greeted with a gleeful grin, a round belly protruding under his pulled-up shirt, and a calculator number key pad FIRMLY wedged in his belly button!

* He found a vanilla-scented, or should I say -flavored, tea-light candle somewhere in my living room and took 2 distinct bites out of it: about half the candle. Since I cannot find the pieces anywhere, I am assuming they were ingested!

* Dear big sister handed him 2 of her bouncy balls in the car as a sweet gesture to keep him happy on the road. (Are you picking up on this strapped-in-car-seat-and-bored so let's-see-what-I-can-rip-with-my-teeth theme?) When unloading the car later in my futile attempt to keep it clean, I noticed the bouncy balls were both missing chunks of rubber. I sure hope he didn't eat that!