Dental Day

On Friday, Peeper noticed that the cap had broken off one of her teeth. The sharp edge was bothering her, and it didn't look so great, so we made an appointment to have it put back this afternoon.

When Dr. C. took a look around, though, she found a couple of small cavities in neighboring molars that she wanted to go ahead and take care of. I'd actually noticed one spot while "helping" her brush, and been a bit suspicious of it, but in denial.

That's not a good thing to do, I know, but I'm really glad now that I did not rush her in to the dentist to have them filled when I first noticed it, only to have her turn around an break off a cap a few weeks later.

Because she would actually be drilling into the molars, not just taking a bit off the surface as she's done before, Dr. C. said that she'd definitely need to numb her up. But never fear, because she used a topical anesthetic before doing the injection, and more importantly, she was grooving on nitrous oxide the whole time.

It definitely lived up to its reputation - and its nickname - as she started giggling after about a minute, and didn't really care much at all about what was going on in her mouth. I was sitting by her feet, so I actually got to see what was going on this time. (In the past she's been in my lap, so I've gotten the same view of the procedures that she has.)

She was peeking at me between her sunglasses and the nose mask, playing "got your nose" with the hygienist (Peeper was the getter), giggling off and on, and when Dr. C. started with the real-deal drill, she squirmed a bit and said, "It tickles!"

As soon as she started the giggling, Shrike looked at me and said, "No video," so you'll have to take my word for all that.

Believe it or not, this was actually taken before the laughing gas, but we can pretend it was during.

The whole time she was working on her, Dr. C. kept going on about what a great job she was doing, and how cooperative she always is. Of course, the gas helped today, but she's always quite agreeable for exams and procedures, not just at the dentist, but for all doctors.

We figure, as much time as she spent in and out of doctor's offices in her first few months, it could've gone one of two ways - either she'd be completely traumatized and phobic about them, or they'd just seem like home. We are so glad she decided to go with the latter.

She was hoping to go to the kid's gym down the road after her appointment, but by the time we were finished, they were about to close. We made alternate plans to hit the inflatable place in Shrike's work town on the way home, but got slowed down with a stop for Tylenol, another stop for a chocolate shake, and rush hour traffic, so that's been postponed until tomorrow.

She may have done a great job while the work was being done, but she was pretty whiny on the way home, between the weirdness of being numb and the disappointment about not being able to "go to a special place after the dentist" as she kept referring to it.

Shrike finally appeased her by suggesting that we bake cookies when we got home.

Since they're just for funsies, we let her pretty much do whatever she wanted with them. I used a muffin tin to divide a can of icing into a dozen small plops, and she went to town with the food coloring. After seeing a couple of pools of food coloring with a bit of icing in them, I decided to take over the actual squirting, so it would be done in a more controlled fashion, but I followed her instructions about what to put where. Evidently, she was in a bit of a green mood today.

She did most of the decorating all my herself. (I did ice few, and touched up several because she has trouble with the part about actually getting a good plop of icing on the cookie.)

Not a bad consolation prize.

(Yes. Yes, we do see the irony of sugar cookies and icing as a prize for doing a great job while getting her teeth filled.)