The morning started with a ton of errands, so many in fact, that I was having anxiety dreams about it the night before in which I could not find the chicken broth at the grocery store. We successfully navigated the longest grocery trip first thing in the morning, leaving only picking up Kevin's car battery, Target, Checkers (our very favorite grocery store for produce!), and the bank, when I handed Stephanie a tootsie roll as requested. With a "crunch" from the backseat, I glanced in the mirror and I could clearly see her tooth was missing the crown. In a surprising moment of non-panic (sad regret, yes, but no actual panic), I reached back, dug out the pieces of tooth from her mouth, and made a right hand turn from the stop sign at which I sat to head home. She was pretty upset at first, but I told her we would go to the dentist and that it would be fine. If you have followed my previous posts, then you know how she feels about the dentist, so she pulled it together while I ran groceries inside and called the dentist. They needed to talk to the dentist and call me back, and I decided to try to trooper on through the errands when I saw that she really wasn't too upset. She had already been promised a toy (love the "One Spot"!) from Target for being "good" (read, not a heinous mess) at the grocery store, so I went straight for the gold and reminded her of the toy. In reality, I wanted to go get the battery first because that made so much more sense geographically. I offered that we could go to Target first and get her toy, or we could go get Daddy's car battery first and then Target. She sniffled a bit and said, "We get Daddy's battery first, his car no working". Side note: The car not working and the battery thing has been interesting to her this week. We watched Kevin take it out of the car, and then he went to the battery store. He left the battery there to be charged, and she was a little curious about why he had to leave it and did not bring it home. At Best Buy the next day, she got super excited, and bee-lined away from me to go find him to drag him across the store to show him that she had found batteries for his car. In this case, an entire display of AA, AAA and D batteries, all of which, I am fairly certain, will not work in his car, but ridiculously funny and cute. Back to tooth day- We picked up the battery, and headed to Target, at which point I realized it made more sense to go to Checkers before Target, so I suckered her into that too. Then off to Target for real, where I ended up getting her 5 puzzles- a little guilt plus the fact that I kind of love doing puzzles with her, and she is Ah-mazing to watch working on a puzzle. She can do a 24 piece by herself, and we just watch in awe. And, she will spend a solid 20 minutes with a puzzle, and not many activities last that long. By then, we have a dentist appointment, and I realize that there will be no nap today, as the timing is just not going to work.
At the dentist, I quickly realize this is not the crisis I had imagined. As soon as they lay her back, I can see the white filling in her tooth, and it occurs to me that the tooth was cleaned and packed last time, and all that has happened is that the crown has broken off, so this particular tootsie roll only cost us $100 as opposed to the $1000 trip and fall (though, to be fair, it would have been more like $500 without dental insurance this time, and the first time daycare insurance mostly paid). And it was about then that I also realized how much has changed in a year and a few months. The first time we were there, she had to be held by us and was clearly nervous the entire time. This time, she climbed up in the dentist chair, answered the hygienist's questions, and, here was where I was totally shocked- when they needed to X-ray her to make sure the root was sound, she went with the technician, climbed into a huge chair, wore the lead apron, and just sat still while the hygienist did the X-ray, with me in the other room- a far cry from Kevin having to bear hug her still last time. If you asked me what she was like a year ago, I don't really remember... we are just constantly living life now, and what she was doing or not doing a year ago isn't really pertinent, but sitting in the same place a year later really reminded me of how FAST she is growing up, which, by the way, if you ask something like "When did you get so heavy?", she will respond, "I growing up so fast.". Yes, Stephanie, you clearly are.
In terms of the tooth, they were able to fix it that day. Kevin had planned on leaving work to come to the procedure, but they scheduled things pretty quickly and Kevin can only bike across town so fast, so I told him we were okay. In fact, they gave us just enough time to walk across the street to the bank (that's right, Mom and Stephanie actually did ALL the day's errands, even with a little unplanned dental work!) and do a little coloring in the waiting room. I think Kevin felt a little bad that he wasn't going to make it... Perhaps he was thinking of the last visit and had no idea that we were happily coloring waiting to be seen again, and I was not stuck managing an anxious baby/toddler on my own.
During the procedure, they gave her a little nitrous and sent me out of the room. About 20 minutes later, they delivered her to the waiting room to me, where she did quiz me for several minutes as to why I left the room, but otherwise seemed fine. The tooth looks great, and I have since thoroughly inspected the rest of the Halloween candy for any tootsie rolls or Baby Ruths. Oh, and I actually lied, I do have a picture (and if you have read this far, you deserve one)! When I realized Kevin wasn't going to make it, I snapped a few shots of the tooth so that he could see it pre-repair. She was more than happy to show it off. I am skipping the shot where you can see the tooth, as it is not very flattering, but this one shows that she was more than happy to have a few photos of her sad little tooth before we could fix it.
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