Eighty and Seventeen

On the way to school this morning I talked to my children about where they were going after school because today was their very first visit to the dentist.  I told them their dentist was named Brooke and she lived in our neighborhood and had two little girls who were a lot like them.   I explained that Brooke was going to look at their teeth and count them and see if they were clean.   I let them know that she was an expert and she would see if they'd been brushing the breakfast and snack and dessert off their teeth when they brushed.

My children were pretty excited about the visit.  The thing they were most interested in was having the dentist count their teeth.  I asked them if they knew how many teeth they had?   I was immediately rewarded by the sound of both children counting out loud in muffled tones because their fingers were in their mouths feeling each tooth.

My son declared he had one-hundred teeth.   I told him that sounded like a very full mouth.   In the meantime, my daughter had finished counting and let us know she had seventeen teeth.   With the large disparity in numbers, my son elected to re-count and came up with a confident and definitive count of eighty teeth.

After school they ate lunch in the car and we drove to the dentist's office.   I had no idea how it was going to go, but they were both terrific.  Not one bit of fear.   There was no anxiety and if anything, an overabundance of excitement.

Their hygienist checked and cleaned their teeth and then they took some X-rays.  I am going to digress at this point because there was an exciting tool I just have to mention: they had a hand-held X-ray machine that looked just like this:

I'd never seen one smaller than a room-installed contraption, so this thing was my favorite part of the visit.   The hygienist said the dosage of X-rays is so low that eating a banana gave the equivalent in radiation exposure. (I haven't looked that one up for verification, but it sure is an interesting thought.)

My children sat in the dental chairs and smiled.   They opened their mouths and let the hygienist clean their teeth.   Brooke, their dentist, came over and looked at everything and told them they were doing a good job of brushing.    Then they each received two special coins to get prizes out of a gum ball-like machine that dispensed everything but candy and gum.

We go back in six months.    I think they'll look forward to seeing Brooke and their hygienist again.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loved the entire experience at the dentist today.  He particularly liked the machines that gave out prizes.   While his sister was busy with the hygienist, he rotated the machines around and around and asked me what each of the things were.   Oh, and do you remember when he fell and his tooth turned dark and then lightened later on?   The X-ray showed what Brooke said they call a, "spontaneous root canal."   It looks like there was damage to the nerve so the tooth filled in the nerve canal with harder material to solve the problem.   She said this is great news and that the tooth is completely fine and should remain so until it falls out in a few years to make way for the permanent tooth.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was interested in everything that happened at the dentist.  Her brother went first and she wanted to be right there, watching everything the hygienist did to clean his teeth. She was standing right beside him, watching every step.  She was ready for her turn when it came and selected the strawberry tooth polish (her brother picked chocolate.)  She was very excited to have her teeth cleaned as you can see from the picture...