not for the faint of heart

Tonight Clay and I were messing around while cranking his palatal expander (link to a web page explaining more about palatal expanders). He wanted to see what it looked like and I wanted some pictures of it anyway to remember the "good times". So here a couple picture of the top of Clay's mouth with his palatal expander in. We are about 1/2 way through with me cranking it every other day (for 20 days). So far we have lost the key for an entire weekend, but after getting another one from the orthodontist we found the old one. Tonight was the first time I stabbed Clay in the top of the mouth with the key. It does require my reading glasses and bright light for me to find that little hole to push the mechanism back.

I guess when we are done Clay will be a big mouth!