Dental Dread

(Meant to be posted on 3/7/2011)
Tomorrow, both kids have dental appointments. I am so dreading this. When we lived in Germany, we got one visit a year at the base clinic (if you could get an appointment) plus we all had to get cleared by dental before we could PCS. Oh military. How I looooove you and your hoops that are completely pointless. Where else can a possible cavity keep you from escaping moving to a new base?!?

And suddenly, it's been almost two years since the kids and I have graced a dental chair. Whoops! The base dental clinic here does not see dependants, so off base we go. That's fine with me because that way we get to choose who our dentists are. First, we had to get new dental cards from our supplemental dental insurance company, plus get it straightened out that S was, indeed, our child and dental responsibility since she wasn't listed on some system somewhere in military paperwork land. Quite the charlie foxtrot.

T has been to the dentist about four times now, S has only been once. They have a joint appointment. My only fear for T with a dentist is that he'll need to have dental work done that requires numbing and a big old Novocaine needle. Just thinking about it makes me want to crawl inside the dryer and hide. I'm not sure how S will do - it will either go beautifully or horribly.
At night, R takes the kids up to brush their teeth. Every now and then I'll realize their teeth could use a little something extra, so I'll either brush them or take them up for the next couple of nights. But we really should have started flossing a while ago. When did we start? Ummmm....today. T's teeth are so close together that the first time I flossed his teeth I made his gums bleed and it was this whole big thing with tears and accusatory little toddler eyes - I couldn't take it. I bought the little floss pick things, but pretty much they ended up as toys and occasionally weapons. But as far as flossing goes, it went pretty well. I need to floss more anyway, so I figure this is a great opportunity for me to improve my flossing frequently too.

So if any of you hear some crazy screaming tomorrow around 9, 9:30, don't worry -  it's just our dental appointment worst case scenario. But I'm about 7% sure that won't happen.