Open wide.....

Yesterday I took the boys to the dentist.

They were WAY overdue for a checkup....I don't even want to try and work out just how overdue...someone may feel the need to report me to DOCS.

Dentists are just one of those places that I find very easy to put off, defer, avoid, ignore, desist, shun and evade....maybe because I hate them and their whiny, whirry horrid noises so much myself.  But also because they charge like a wounded bull and there never, ever seems to be a week where I say "Oh look here's a spare $500 lying around with absolutely nothing I need or want to spend it on...let's book the boys in for a dental checkup...there's nothing I'd rather spend this $500 on than that."  Pfftt....yeah right!

But there comes a time when you simply can't put it off any longer.  It could have something to do with the cold feeling of guilt I got every time I looked at them....or perhaps it was the nightmares I was having where they tap me on the shoulder and smile a wide smile at me as their teeth drop out that propelled me into action....freaky.  Whatever the incentive...I finally did the right thing and booked them in for a checkup.

I was clearly more nervous than they were...after all I remember back in the day...probably before fluoride was added to the water....where a trip to the dentist almost certainly meant a nasty filling or two.

So in we went...they took turns to be poked and scraped with the dentist's nasty pointy, scrapy thing...to be squirted with that nasty whooshy spraying thing....to be brushed with that whiny, scary brushy thing and sucked with that horrid screechy suction thing.

I waited with my own teeth clenched throughout each cringe inducing noise for the diagnosis...the confirmation that I am a terrible, neglectful mother...and then it came....no cavities for either one of them....WOO HOO.....lets celebrate with a bottle of soft drink and a bag of lollies.

I left the surgery with a spring in my step.....a bill for $390 in my pocket.....and a referral to an orthodontist for both of them.....yep, Master 15 soon to be known as Master Brace Face and Master 12 to be renamed as Master Metal Mouth...oh and don't forget a second mortgage on the house to pay for it.