Mom of the Year

I'll be waiting for my award after this one.

Today, I took both girls to the dentist. It was Julia's first time. I should emphasize, by the way, that Allie adores going to the dentist. It's a pediatric dentist office, which I insisted on because of my sister, Pam, who went on dental visits with me when I was a kid and who refused to open her mouth despite any threat or bribe (and yes, she paid for that in a big way later in her childhood).

This dental office has a movie theater theme, with many movie posters on the walls, movie theater fold-down stadium-style seats, a mannequin ticket taker at the registration desk, a big screen TV continuously showing movies that's dressed up with velvet curtains like a theater, and film wallpaper spooling around the walls. Each reclining plush dental chair has a personal flatscreen television showing children's movies, plus the regular TV screens around the walls that show other movies.

Children wear fancy sunglasses so they don't get the bright dental light in their eyes. X-rays are presented as taking photos of their teeth, and there are an extraordinary number of prizes, jewelry, and stickers available after each visit is completed.

And there are other pretty standard kid dentist features, like puppets with oversize real teeth to teach brushing, different toys to hold (all movie themes here), the gas nasal mask presented as an elephant's nose, etc.

At Allie's first dental visit, the technician took care to ask her flavor preference, gave her a ride in the chair, let her pick the pink sunglasses, demonstrated each tool on her hand first, and so on. She thought it was all wonderful and as soon as we finished, she immediately wanted to go back and see the dentist again.

Despite me and Allie talking up the dentist, Julia wasn't so sure she wanted to go. Allie's exam was first and she passed everything with flying colors, as normal. Julia was a little tentative watching her at first, then she was pretty interested in everything that was happening. I allowed myself to get hopeful (big mistake).

Julia got in the dental chair with only a little urging. She enjoyed the ride up and down in the chair. Then the technician started to show her the soft brush (which polishes her teeth) and Julia didn't want that anywhere near her hand, let alone in her mouth. She accepted a drink from the water sprayer, but didn't want the suction thing to come close. It went downhill from there.

Before long, she was sitting in my lap in the chair (because she wouldn't sit by herself anymore), holding her hands over her mouth while me, Allie, and the technician (who irritatingly keep referring to Julia as her "new friend") tried to convince her to open her mouth. We all tried talking. We resorted to threats. We got limited success with bribery.

We all gave up, but she still needed to be examined by the dentist himself. Dr. Wilson came over and Julia wasn't haven't any of it. She was done. She didn't want to hear anything about how the doctor just wanted to look and wouldn't give any ouchies or put anything inside her mouth. She was finished with this whole dentist thing.

So I leaned her back in my arms and she started to scream. Loudly. And kick the technician (until I grabbed her legs). Did I mention that this is one big, really open dentist office. I would guess that at least 30 people could hear her yelling.

The good news is that because she was screaming, the dentist actually got a really good review of her mouth. She doesn't have any cavities (which is surprising, considering how she loves to chew her toothbrush and swallow toothpaste instead of brush) and her teeth are developing normally (despite the thumbsucking, which we need to convince her to stop, hopefully by her next appointment--at which time she'll be about the age that Allie was when she quit).

Julia was thrilled to get out of the office and go get macaroni and cheese for lunch. I took her back to daycare, took Allie back to school, and went back to work. And I only have ten more gray hairs to show for my day.