Ben's Day at the Dentist

Well, it was Ben's day today ... the first trip to the dentist. I was a bit nervous about this as Ben has a tendency to scream at the drop of a hat, and his screams can be rather ... umm ... piercing. To make it even better, he was going to see Jenny (poor lady). Jenny is wonderful in so very many ways - she just had the misfortune to be the nursery leader when we were trying to get Ben (who hates change of any type) to stay in the nursery on Sundays. So, for a while, Ben would literally start screaming whenever he saw Jenny. You can see where I am going with this.

So, the goal for today was to get Ben into the chair and avoid any screaming at ALL costs. The day did not start encouragingly as little Lily came over to play (nearly the same age as Ben) this morning and they were at each other's throats almost immediately. Lily got a great hit on Ben (which he promptly returned when he thought no one was watching) and the melee began ... it was 8:00 am. However, despite some rough starts in general and the suspicion that Ben has developed that if he gets to go with Mommy by himself then a needle must be involved (I wonder where he got that idea), we managed to leave the house in plenty of time to walk the block-and-a-half to the dentist's office.

He did pretty good - laughed and smiled for the lovely elderly couple in the front office. When Jenny came out, you could literally see the calculation in his face as he determined the distance between her and me, but he decided to wait and see. She picked him up (and the question was nearly decided right then and there) and took him over to the toys. Hurray - there was one with wheels! She was okay then. She took him back to her chair and showed him how the chair moved up and down - he decided it didn't move fast enough and tried to push and pull it himself (he's such a helpful ray of sunshine!)

After that, we tried to get him to climb into the chair on his own, but he wasn't born yesterday. When we patted the seat and told him to climb up, he just grinned and patted the seat right back at us. So, I held my breath and picked him up and dumped him into the seat myself. Fortunately, he found this novel rather than irritating - for a split second. Jenny handed him a set of teeth and a toothbrush - which he was happy to hold, but didn't really know what to do with. Then, she gave him a toothbrush of his very own ... now he was ready. Here he is with Jenny - showing her how its done (sorry Jenny, the picture is just too cute!)

We were getting pretty confident and decided to put the chair back. At this point - Ben was done and ready to get down. So I sat in the chair and put him on my lap and we all got to lay back. Looking back at the morning, I'm certain that was his plan all along - to get Mommy in the chair. Still, we were there - lights on - ready to clean ... or not. Ben let Jenny polish the ouside half of four teeth (one at a time) and she got to count the teeth - by feel mostly. I wish I could have gotten pictures of her and Dr. Kent making faces to get Ben to open his mouth so that Dr. Kent could count his teeth - but he was on my lap and the camera was out of reach (all part of the plan, I'm guessing). At any rate, one thing he really loved was "Mr. Thirsty"


So, since the goal was to avoid screaming - it was a sucessful visit. Maybe in six months, he'll let her polish four more teeth - or at least the insides of the ones she got today?

After that, I dropped him off at the circus (aka home) with the rest of the brood and a long-suffering babysitter and spent the next couple of hours getting my hair permed. I would include a picture, but I have total control of the camera so .... lets just say I am channeling Jenifer Grey without the bangs.