Dentist-Assisted Tooth Fairy Visit

Larkin had a tooth that was bothering her while we brushed her teeth, so we went off to the dentist to get it fixed. We were referred to a fabulous pediatric dentist who uses nitrous oxide with kids to help calm them so they don't have to go under general anesthesia for dental work (which is, apparently, a shockingly common practice). Larkin loves going to the dentist for cleaning, but this was the first time she had any actual work done, so I was a little leery of how the experience would go.

The tooth had apparently abscessed in a fairly magnificent way, so out it came. The moment the dentist came in, he started this horrible, patronizing constant patter about how beautiful, brave, etc. Larkin is. I cringed, Larkin ate it up. As he worked, and Larkin became more stoned from the nitrous, he talked about the bugs he was hunting down in her mouth and how brave she was as he hunted and on and on and Larkin never even realized that she got novocaine shots, a tooth pulled and another cavity filled as long as he was in there already.

Larkin had a bit of a hard time not being able to talk with all the paraphernalia in her mouth. She thanked the dentist for every compliment, causing him to add "very well-mannered" to his growing list of glowing attributes. At one point, the dentist told her that she was "the bravest person on this table," causing dental work to halt long enough for Larkin to reply: "Yeah, well, I'm also the *only* person on this table." The dentist claimed no one ever called him on that one, and thus "clever" was introduced into his patter.

I have some "full disclosure" issues when it comes to our kids... I had a very hard time not telling Larkin all about exactly what the procedure was and what would be happening when. In the end, I'm glad I bit my tongue... Larkin had some pretty serious dental work done and is excited to go back the next time. Hooray for inane, patronizing patter!

When faced with the dentist's Wall O' Bribes full of candy, cheap toys, toothbrushes, etc, Larkin chose a pair of sunglasses because she had recently lost hers.

Once she realized she had a tooth pulled, Larkin became very excited. We have a book called Throw Your Tooth on the Roof (Thanks, Alex!) which describes what different cultures traditionally do with lost teeth. I asked her what she wanted to do with her tooth. "I want the tooth fairy to bring money and candy... and I'm going to create quite a challenge for you guys by putting it under my dragon pillow's butt! I think you should get some candy for Finn, too, so he doesn't feel bad that I got something and he didn't." I love the way she embraces the magical while acknowledging the practical.

So the tooth fairy brought a dollar and a bag of her favorite (non-hippie) m&ms. The next morning, we were woken by the crinkling candy bag and a whispered, "I just wanted to thank you for getting my favorite m&ms... you guys are the best."

Later that morning, on the way to the park, Larkin was chatting in the car about all the wonderful things she could get with her dollar... and how would she ever choose... and how many of what could she buy with a dollar? After this had gone on for awhile, I realized (I suffer from a sometimes unforgivable obliviousness to consumer culture) that there is actually a store where everything costs a dollar! Once the kids understood the concept, we were off to the Dollar Tree (Larkin made sure that Finn could have a dollar, too, before deciding to go).

I was quite amused to discover that Larkin and Finn have very different shopping styles. Larkin wanted to look at *everything* in the store to see what was there, and then decide what to buy. Finn picked up everything that caught his eye and carried it around insisting that was what he wanted, then immediately rejected it for the next best thing. Finn (who spent the whole ride over talking about how he was going to get candy after I mentioned that was one of the things they would probably have in the store) went through an orange star balloon, a package of small squishy balls, a horse's head on a stick riding toy, a hard toy horse, a plastic gun, and probably a few other things before happily going home with an orange glow-in-the-dark sword. Larkin got a huge, foil, helium-filled butterfly balloon.

Then we had a lovely long morning at the park which ended a bit sooner than we would have liked when Finn slipped into the duck pond. Apparently, I have gotten lax about packing spare clothes in the car. Ah well.