Every six months, like clock work, we load the kids up in the car and take them into the dentist. Someone, somewhere, sometime, thought it would be a good idea for everyone to visit their local dentist twice a year and, being good little health consumers, we heed their advice. Our insurance company takes the every six months very, very seriously. When they say every six months, they mean every six months and not a day sooner. If you go to the dentist in the afternoon the day before your six months are up, they will not pay for it. Thankfully, since our dentist likes to get paid, they keep track of all this for us.
We got to the dentist a little early, all the staff was still out to lunch. That left a few minutes to check out the magazines, etc. Spark went into the kid section and came out with this humongous set of teeth and a tooth brush that must have been at least 18 inches long. The teeth were held together with a long bendy cord so they could be opened and closed. The kids had the best time with these teeth! They put them crooked and said that they would need head gear or rubber bands, looked through them from the back like they were being eaten by a large set of dentures, grabbed the tooth brush and pulled it through like a person was eating the brush. Spark came out of his appointment, where he got a shiny, very large, lime green, plastic ring. The first thing he did was run back for the teeth, stuck his hand in from the back and pretended his hand was the tongue where he announced, "Look, the tongue is pierced." I bet he was in there the whole time thinking about those teeth. I never thought there would be anything exciting enough at the dentist that we should bring the camera with, but I sure wish we had today!
We even got by the lady who is a huge fan of fluoride. Spark had her today. She came out to have me sign the form that says that nothing has changed since last time he was there, and as I am signing it Spark yells, yes he actually yelled a little, that he gets no fluoride. He could be that avid about it because I lecture them before we go that if they want to put a little tray of goo on their teeth not to let them do it. Since Spark was going to be going in by himself today, his first time ever to attempt the appointment without Dad or I sitting on the stool right next to him, I really drilled it into his head before we left. Everyone else at the office is fine with us not using fluoride except this one assistant who thinks the reason we don't want it is because I don't understand why they need it. I often feel like she has decided her mission in life is to make me "understand." One time she made me so mad we almost left in the middle of the appointment before she started to back down on the issue. Today all it took was a few sentence dialog and she was in agreement with my wishes.
Our tradition after dentist appointments is to go out for a snack afterward. This is something my dad did with me so I continued it on with our kids. Actually, my dad probably took me out to eat because he was hungry. Without fail, we would have the first appointment of the morning and so we wouldn't eat before we left. Either way, I remember those times fondly and so I do the same with our kids now. Our town has a Subway and a McDonald's so there isn't much of a choice. The kids chose McDonald's. Since their teeth were nice a clean, we had McFlurries to get a good start on building the tartar back up.
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