I had braces from July of 2002 to July of this year. From July '02 to December of that same year, I had this device called a tongue crib in my mouth. It had this annoying little piece of metal hanging down from my mouth so my tongue wouldn't rest against my front teeth. For the first few months I had to crank the thing to expand my jaw. Once that was gone, I moved onto elastics that would go from the top to the bottom of my mouth. I lost these in December of 2003, I think. This past July, the braces came off, and in came the retainer, which unfortunatley has that annoying tongue crib device. But now I'm used to the thing, but before (the first time around) I couldn't eat or talk properly for a month. I have those inside braces that Erica mentioned above, too. At my next appointment, I think I can loose my retainer and I get to decide if I want to keep the inner guys or not. I think I'll keep them, I see no reason to loose them.
I don't have the problem of remembering to put my retainer in. I never take it out except to eat (although I'm supposed to keep it in during that too :\).
My braces were plain silver. I don't see why you'd want coloured ones. Why would you want blue teeth? My braces were small too.
