New appliance, new journey

Well for those of you that don't know, Scott's mouth is a cluster of missing teeth! In fact while I was gone last year he lost 6 in that time. So now if you were to see his x-rays they look like a tooth orgey going on, as there is no room for them to fall into place. In fact a few were even trying to push through the roof of his mouth. At that point we headed to the dentist with him. They sent us onto the orthodontist for an evaluation. Well because he lost so many so fast, his jaw hasn't grown to keep up with it, so started a new journey for Scott. He has had spacers in for the last few weeks, and yesterday he had this appliance put in that will work on spreading his jaw out. He will wear that for about 2 months all total. For the first 2 weeks of it we (Tim or I) will have to turn this crank like device in it 2 times a day. Each turn is maybe about a centimeater or so. After 2 weeks we get re-evaluated and then it gets left alone for about 6 weeks so that everything can get set into their new spot. After that comes out then Scott will get partial braces to help move a few teeth together (as there is a pretty big gap between front teeth, and this is actually going to make that bigger). All total we are told that this will take about 18 months to finish up, and because of what we are doing now, he shouldn't have to have full braces at all. Even with the fact that all his side teeth are still baby teeth, they say that because we are making the room now, and getting everything lined up, it will stay that way.
So far he is doing pretty good with this whole thing. He is having a bit of a challenge saying anything that requires the roof of the mouth (like T's), and he is having to learn how to re-swallow. The pictures I've included here are the starting point for all of this. One is just a close up of his teeth, and the other is a picture of the new appliance that they put in. I'll keep everyone posted on how this goes!!