A big day at the dentist
I’m so tired, but I know everyone will be looking for this in the morning, so here goes!
We had an exciting day at the dentist today. As planned, I gave Lex a small dose of Valium an hour before our appointment and he was nice and relaxed… until it came time to get in the car! Then he fought like he hasn’t fought in along time! It was rough. We got him buckled in to the carseat and he settled down. We did a lot of talking about what would happen and the process. When we got to the dentist he just cried. I carried him in and he cried (thankfully the hitting and kicking had subsided) and, amazingly enough, when we got into the dentist chair he calmed right down. He was intrigued to go into a different room than they normally put him in. For cleanings he’s in an open-ish room with several chairs, for this procedure we were in a room with a closed door. Soundproof, perhaps? :) I was really impressed with how well the dentist did. He tends to talk down to Lex a bit and I think that confuses Lex sometimes, but it seemed to work well and he did an amazing job of calming Lex and he seemed really tender and attentive. No medical talk over Lex’s head, no “sit still!”, nothing. He called Lex “Lexi” many times, but that’s ok. He stayed in the room the whole time, with me and two nurses. He had me sit on the chair, legs off to the side, and Lex lay across my lap with his head positioned in the chair. I think Lex was really comfortable and I got to hold his hands. I had to turn my head a few times (needle injections in many places around his tooth, tooth pulled, something stuck deep inside the hole, eek!) but the whole thing went so well. They even gave Lex his tooth in a little green treasure chest because Lex told them that green is his favorite color.
I know you’re all wondering if the tooth fairy will be visiting our house. I’m sorry to disappoint, but I think she’ll be flying right by tonight. Alan and I struggle (ok, I think I struggle and he’s ok with it) about how much to encourage the lies/fantasies. I usually have no problem playing along, but I can’t bring myself to bring it up. Lex knows nothing about the tooth fairy and he’s a pretty logical guy, so I couldn’t figure out a way to build the story. So I didn’t. He is excited to take his tooth to school tomorrow and I think that is a better solution for all of us. :)
He wasn’t in the mood for a photo this afternoon, but I’ll get one for you soon. We spent the day relaxing. Lex napped and then played with play-doh for hours, I baked bread and mini carrot cakes (and I’m ill from my complete and total lack of will-power!), and made dinner. Eve was bored silly by the end of the day. She’s protesting daycare tomorrow, but I think it will be good for her. I’m hoping all goes smoothly getting him to school and daycare tomorrow. He’s still awake up stairs now though (it’s 9:49pm) so we’ll see how tomorrow goes!
Trout
Alan and I went out to dinner tonight and left the kids with a new babysitter. Well, newish, she was here last week too and they LOVE her. We came home to find them playing hangman. Lex picked the word and she was guessing letters. Guess what he picked? Trout! So funny! None of us grownups could really believe it. :) Not fish, or bird, but trout. We don’t eat fish around here (obviously) so the fact that he was so specific was just humorous. I asked why he picked trout and he said, “That’s just the word I thought of.” Can’t argue with that. The babysitter was very impressed, and amused!
Baaa!
One big peach!
First barrettes
Participation
We were a few minutes early to school today and had to wait in the lobby until 8am. While we waited I pointed out to Lex the daily question that the principal posts each morning. He writes it on a whiteboard in the lobby and the kids all answer or vote as they come in. Lex read the question (“Should there be a wolf on the new school sign?”) and said, “Yes!” Then he grabbed the marker and wrote “YES” (see it it blue with a red checkmark in between?) Then he danced around with the open marker for a bit while I gently (sort of ) asked him to put the top on the marker before dancing. He said, “I’m not done yet. First I need to make an exclamation point to say that I’m excited!” So he added the ! and then put the marker down. I was bummed that I didn’t have the camera with me at the time, but I brought it at pick-up and took this picture. You can see that lots of people added their comments in the meantime, and in-between his letters :)
Crying Eve
I’ve been thinking lately about the effects of preschool on Eve. We didn’t do anything to prepare her for it because, well… what’s to do? We got Lex all prepared and figured Eve’s routine wouldn’t change much anyway. Now I’m wondering if that was the right thought.
She has been a fussy mess lately. I know she’s two and it comes with the age, but I really miss my sweet, good-natured baby girl. She cries, a lot, and fusses, and whines. I think a lot of it stems from her not sleeping well, but I’m not really sure why she isn’t sleeping well. She often wakes up crying at night. I think she might have bad dreams sometimes. She wakes up much earlier than she used to and is harder to put to bed.
What prompted this post however is her daycare fussing. When we started daycare she loved it. Lex cried a lot, but Eve was always super cheery and happily went off to play. Since Lex started school though Eve has really started to protest daycare. The past three or four days we’ve gone, I left her in a ball of tears. This morning she begged to come with me to drop Lex off (normally I drop her off first on daycare days) and she was happy until we got to daycare, then tears, tears, tears. I left her standing by the door crying that she wanted to come to work with me. The teacher was right next to her and I know it doesn’t last long, but it’s rough! She even suggested we drop me off first, before taking her to daycare :) She said she would carry me into my office. Silly girl! I wonder if she misses having Lex with her at daycare?
Lex also cries everytime I bring him to daycare after school. Sigh. The hardest part is that I started the work/daycare thing to give her more social interaction (since it was so hard to get him out the door for playdates) and to get him ready for school. Now he’s happy at school and Eve and I have mornings for playdates… so the need to work is no longer there… which makes leaving them in tears two days a week really tough :(






