After the Storm...

Comes the rainbow! We had the pleasure of seeing a rainbow on the way home today. It even became a double rainbow for a little while, but was too faint to capture on film.

The girls and I had a fun afternoon - since Daddy Dude is still out of town on business, we decided to celebrate the end of a long week by going shopping (the girls have their own allowance money and can earn "extra" with doing additional chores or performing well during their softball games - Mika, for instance, earned several extra dollars by turning a double-play in her last game, as well as helping another teammate turn two double-play in the game before that). After shopping, we treated ourselves to Arby's. Ah, how lovely not to cook on a Friday night! In the picture above, you might be able to see that Mika's got a big gap between her front teeth now. She's in "phase I" of her orthodontics treatment - she is wearing a rapid palatal expander appliance and currently, we are in week two of turning the key. As the orthodontial treatment coordinator said, "it'll look worse before it looks better" - hence, the gap between the front teeth. In a few months, she'll get a few braces on top and bottom and treatment will eventually be over in about one year. Once all of her baby teeth are gone, she'll get her braces. Time to start saving!

Speaking of expensive items... look what Miss Mika got from the orthodontist! Yes, that's an iPod Touch! I was flabberghasted last week, when they gave it to us - apparently, they were having some sort of a promotion. In all honesty, we were thinking about getting an MP3 player for the girls, but Miss Mika is a pretty destructive kid (Marika would have been fine, I think). We haven't given it to her yet (Daddy Dude needs to finish loading up all of the High School Musical and Grease soundtracks on it) but will very soon. We keep telling her, "now remember - this ISN'T a 'free' iPod - it was very expensive!"

*note - if you look at her top front teeth in the picture above, there is no gap - this was the first day the RPE appliance was installed. We noticed the gap developing within 1 week, which seems amazingly fast. So overall, Mika is coping well with the orthodontial treatment - although, she is lisping heavily now (hopefully this goes away as she becomes accustomed to the device) and having some difficulty finding yummy things to eat that aren't on the forbidden list.

However, if you look at Mika's teeth in this picture, you can see a prominent gap already. It makes me wonder what she'll look like in another 1.5 weeks (which is when we hope the expansion will be done)!