Thankfully, he won’t remember teething.

He won’t remember shoving his fists in his mouth and chewing on his tiny fingers, just to get some relief. He won’t remember his parents’ frustration and exasperation as they attempted to diagnose and then treat what appeared to be a totally phantom issue (like so many of them are). He won’t even remember the blissful relief a few drops of Baby Orajel afforded him, but that probably has less to do with his unformed brain and more to do with the fact that Baby Orajel doesn’t do shit.

No, he won’t remember the days weeks months of pain that came with the slow emergence of his first teeth. But neither will Mom and Buried and I forget them anytime soon.

I can’t wait until he’s ready to lose his baby teeth in a few years, because at the first sign of a wiggle I am going to pull them out and grind them into dust!

If you haven’t guessed, our son appears to have reached the teething phase of his development.

I say “appears,” because in reality I have no idea! And neither does anyone else. But it seems like a reasonable enough explanation for the way he’s been acting lately. Of course, demonic possession once seemed like a reasonable explanation for epilepsy…

As a five-month-old, our son’s capacity for conveying the specifics of what’s ailing him is, shall we say, limited. So in lieu of having a conversation with him, we’ve looked for answers in all the usual places: other parents, baby books, doctors, our magic 8-ball…

According to that variety of “reputable” sources, teething seems to be the consensus, despite the appearance of exactly zero teeth thus far.

Other parents are all fairly confident (other parents are always confident) that he is indeed teething. But as of yet, we’ve got no teeth.

The baby books are even less helpful. They tell us our son is right smack in the proper timezone for growing his first teeth, but that symptoms related to teething may present themselves up to two months before we actually see any chompers. Two months! Two months of invisible agony!

Not even our pediatrician knows! Our questions are greeted with a lot of “it’s possible” and “maybe” and “your guess is as good as mine” and “degree? I don’t have to show you my degree!”

The Magic 8-Ball gave the most useless answer of all. In fact, I couldn’t even get an answer, the little triangle wouldn’t shift correctly, it was just stuck in limbo the whole time. AWESOME RESOURCE, MATTEL.

Apparently, the only way the doctor will know for sure is the same way we will – actual visual evidence. (Apparently the stars I’m seeing as a result of the kid’s agonized screaming doesn’t count.) As of now, we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of a single goddamn tooth for the two months since he started crying and chewing and everyone subsequently started telling us that he’s teething.

So it seems that we have little recourse but to wait. Until we see something white poking through his little pink gums, we can never be entirely sure that his burgeoning teeth are the reason for his odd behavior.

So there are really four options for why he’s being such a crybaby lately:

1 – he’s teething
2 – he’s a baby, how do you expect him to act?
3 – he’s growing up to be a real asshole
4 – he’s a witch

And unless his gums sprout something soon, we’ll have no choice but to toss him in the bath and see if he floats.