Evelyn's First Trip to the Dentist

Both girls went to the dentist last Thurs and it went a lot better than I expected. Evie did fabulous, but it was Bella I was more worried about. Last time she gagged or something and sort of threw up and since then she has said she never wanted to go to the dentist again. In fact, whenever she hears the word dentist she practically breaks down in tears. To prepare her, we played pretend dentist the night before and she really enjoyed doing that. She was the kid, I was the Mommy and Jeff was the "dentist helper" and the dentist. When I picked her up at daycare the next day, rather than running over to me like usual, she saw me and the tears just started flowing. It was sad. Her teacher let her borrow a book from the class to take with her and that really seemed to help. As I was checking in at the dentist, Jeff showed up, (he was in between a mtg in Cedar Rapids and going back to work). That really helped since both girls ended up needing a lap to sit on while we were there. Bella went first and the hygienist tried to be very nice, it was obvious that there was something written in Bella's chart about her last visit. Bella screamed as the hygienist just tried to brush her teeth, but she survived. She was better when the dentist checked her teeth and he went really quickly, so that was good. He painted fluoride on her teeth and then she was done.

Next was Evie's turn. It was hysterical when the hygienist told her to open wide and she immediately opened her mouth as wide as she could. She will rarely let us brush her teeth at home, so this was really surprising. She also opened really wide for the dentist. When she was done, Bella exclaimed "Evie didn't even cry!". Evie has 18 of her 20 baby teeth! 17 and 18 have been breaking through the last week or so and have been making her miserable. The poor thing has been shoving her whole hand in her mouth at times and slobbering all over the place. He said 19 and 20 are about to break through too.

Bella then proceeded to throw an embarrassing fit about not liking the toy she got. They have toys in candy machines there and you get a token and she thought she was choosing something squishy, but it was hard. The dentist let her trade it in for something else....