Tucker went to the dentist for the first time today, at the urging of his pediatrician who noticed lots of tartar on his front teeth at his annual check-up. Since Austin and my dentist has a hygienist that inflicts severe pain (neither of us have ever had one this bad!), our dentist was not an option. I don't know anyone else in our town who goes to one of the two remaining dentists (well, there's really three but we don't want to go to our next door neighbor either!), so finally I just picked one and scheduled an appointment.
Tucker is not a seize-the-world type of little guy. He doesn't run charging into every new experience; in fact, his modus operandi for something new tends to be in my arms, with his feet clutching me so tightly I can't put him down. He also really doesn't like noise. I wasn't sure a stranger would get very far putting a whirring piece of dental machinery in his mouth.
I was planning on building up this dentist concept and checking out a book about dentists from the library, and a book about alligators so he could know how to open wide like an alligator. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and no books ended up getting checked out.
So what happened? The dentist and his staff were amazing. They saved the day. Beth, the hygienist, polished Tucker's finger nails with the teeth cleaning machine, and sprayed water on his hand and let him play with the suction thing to suction the water up. She complimented his smile so much that he let her count his teeth, and then (gasp!) clean almost all of them with the strange whirring machine.
I am VERY impressed. I could barely get Tucker out of that office this morning, because he was having so much fun. I really think he would've stayed to play with Beth and her toys over going to the park if he had had the option. Instead he walked away with three stickers, a rubber ducky and a big smile.
Phew.
