MARK MY WORD: THE GREAT GNASHING OF TEETH ON SEAWEED STEW

Welcome to terrible teething. That's the stage of life when babies drool excessively like monsters in a B movie and painfully grow teeth.

At 6 months of age, our daughter, Bailey, has entered this stage.

Drugs help, but they don't get rid of all the pain.

We go through a lot to get teeth so we don't have to eat baby mush forever.

The teeth have to push their way through the gums, which isn't easy. It's also torture.

It's as if there are 500 tiny dentists drilling inside your mouth all at the same time without the benefit of anesthetics.

You don't get any sleep and neither do your parents. By this time, there is a great gnashing of teeth by your parents, who, of course, have already acquired their wisdom teeth and a few cavities to boot.

The Spanish Inquisition couldn't hold a candle to teething.

As a baby, you don't have a clue as to what all this pain means. You've never heard of spare ribs or pizza. Your world is defined by pureed baby carrots and rice cereal.

Feeding a baby at this stage is messier than hippo-feeding time at the zoo.

Bailey has progressed from soup-like, first-stage foods to second-stage foods that resemble seaweed stew.

At her age, this is fast food. It doesn't take long for her to get food all over her face and hands. It drips down her chin and onto her T-shirt, unless, of course, you put a bib on her.

It's been my experience, however, that bibs are never big enough to contain all that dripping food.

Of course, babies like other things besides baby food.

This is the stage when everything goes in their mouth, including the living-room rug and mommy's purse. Even sharks don't have feeding frenzies like this.

Fortunately, babies do eventually get teeth. That allows them to go through the I'm-going-to-bite-my-best-friend stage.

Eventually, they grow up and take dance class like our oldest daughter, Becca.

She and about 30 other 4-year-olds performed at the-end-of-year dance recital Saturday night at Academic Hall Auditorium.

Dressed in colorful leotards, they danced and pranced across the wooden stage to the delight of parents, grandparents, and other assorted relatives and friends.

There were enough video and still cameras in the audience to rival a presidential press conference.

Virtually every step of these pre-schoolers was recorded for posterity.

This wasn't a tough audience. There weren't any critics here. Everyone was proud of their child for just being there, performing on stage.

The biggest suspense wasn't what would happen on stage but whether all the dancers would make it back from their fourth exodus to the bathroom by show time.

Fortunately, they did and the recital was a success.

For Becca and some of her fellow dancers, the greatest delight, however, wasn't in the barefoot dancing. Rather, it was in the ice-cream treats afterward at Dairy Queen.

Even at age 4, it's important to keep things in perspective. It also helps to have teeth. Just ask Bailey.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.