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Baby J has taken recently to growling ferociously every few minutes before sinking his gums into my collarbone. Yeah, it's kind of weird.

I guess it's the Time of the Teeth.

You can see the outlines of teeth lurking inside his mouth, but they haven't come out yet.

Correction: they did come out. Then they went back in.

I'm totally not joking.

SC says I'm not crazy and that she knows other people who share this experience. But no one else believes me, even though I showed a fair number of them the toothy point that looked like a grain of rice when it made its debut on his gums. It lasted for several weeks before taking its leave.

Personally, I think it's like the iceberg that downed the Titanic. You don't see it coming, but it causes intense suffering... and then it disappears to save its strength for later. I don't even know where it will decide to come out next. As far as appearances are concerned, it's pretty quiet. 

So I may not know where it went. But I think now it wants to come back out.

Teething is really strange. Baby J will be totally fine -- he'll laugh, smile, flirt with himself in the mirror -- and then, suddenly, he'll be miserable.

The teething ring we keep in the refrigerator helps -- even though he won't hold it himself. He seems to share my distate for it, but he's smarter than I am, I guess. He just sits there gnawing it while it becomes progressively wetter with saliva in my hand. "This is gross," I tell him. He just stares at me balefully and keeps chewing.

It's hard to argue with that.