Veneer

It's so thin. Transparent, barely there, it gives so easily.

But it's all we have, sometimes.

I am her source of comfort, her solace, the one she turns to when she doesn't understand.

I am Mama, source of all things good.

I'm not supposed to break. The world is full of monsters. She shouldn't wonder if I am one of them.

Snug in my arms, breath slow and even, asleep, she trusts me still.

She saw the dark light that shines through the web of cracks and she trusts me still.

If the veneer crumbles and no one notices, does it count?

Drill, Kill, and Fill

We're off to the dentist's this morning for Bird's root canal/crowning. They're going to pull his weird little front tooth, too - it's hanging on by a very stubborn thread, and the other teeth are all out of whack because of it. Poor kid's going to need braces, anyway, but why exacerbate things??

Wish me luck - I now have to go wake him, get him dressed, and load him into the car, all while making sure he neither eats nor drinks anything because they're knocking him out for this procedure - even thought the dentist said he was the coolest, most relaxed kid he'd seen in the chair. He's a good kid, knows what the dentist is all about, and prone to be more curious than apprehensive about what's going on...but the TV on the ceiling playing Toy Story 2 probably helped a little, too...but it'll be easier all around if he sleeps through this one. Think they'll have something to take the edge off for Daddy? I think he's more nervous than the kid.

I may have to resort to bribery to assuage his ire at no breakfast, no drinks, and no snacks in the car...although we have established that one does not eat before one goes to the dentist...so maybe he won't bee too pissed.

Who am I kidding? I bet he'll be irritated just on principle.

Mother of the Year I Ain't

Yesterday I took the Evil Genius to the dentist - he has a few stubborn baby teeth that are mucking up the distribution of his grown-up teeth, and last checkup they found a cavity which they wanted to fill (it's a baby tooth, but it's a molar and will be there for a while, so it needs filling).

A cavity.

In my six-year-old's tooth.

You know whose fault that is - not his, that's whose. It's the fault of the mother who didn't make sure his teeth were brushed every night, even when someone else said they'd take care of it.

So now he has a filling, but that wasn't enough. Nope. The dentist informed me that the cavity was massive - his word, too - and right at the nerve, so my SIX YEAR OLD CHILD needs a crown. A crown!! And a root canal!! At six!!!!!!!!!

I drove home feeling like a shitheel, even though my cheerful little guy didn't care a whit and wanted to know if he could have a biscuit for breakfast (no, he couldn't, since it was lunch time and anyway, he still had a numb mouth and couldn't have solid food until he could feel his face again. He got milk and some cheddar bunnies instead.)(Yes, cheddar bunnies are solid food, but you try telling a kid that cute and hungry he can't eat.)(Didn't think so)

Today we are off to the pediatric dentist, who will possibly drill, kill, and fill while I quietly sit in the corner and lambaste myself with recriminations and self-loathing...because my six-year-old will now have a dead tooth and a stainless steel crown.

I'm the anti-mother-of-the-year, is what I am.

Oh, Yuck!

Yesterday started out a bit rushed; I had a doctor's appointment, no problem. I forgot that Bird had a dental appointment. Oops. Luckily, the nice folks at the dentist's office called the night before to remind me. Double oops, because his dental appointment was scheduled for thirty minutes after my doctors appointment, and while the buildings are across the road from each other, it just wasn't going to happen.

T to the rescue - he would get the kid up and to the dentist's and I could join them there when I was done with my own doctoral frolicking.

I had a long wait - the doc was busy, busy, busy and also running behind...and people like the impatient patient who kept demanding that she be taken for her labs while she waiting, thereby messing with the lab shui by butting in front of other patients. Also, apparently she didn't know precisely which labs she needed, just "a whole mess of them", and so she wanted them to interrupt the doctor's time with other patients to find out. Grr. That's why you have an appointment, madame, so the nice doctor can determine what to test for!

Don't get me wrong, sometimes you can just pop in for labs in the morning for an appointment later in the day, but that's when you know what they're testing for. I don't know any physician who simply says "Oh, test for everything." Wouldn't that take, like, a gallon of blood??

I got a fair bit of crochet done on the shawl I am making for myself. Hmm. That's two projects I have going for me - crocheted shawl and flannel quilt. How odd...I usually don't make stuf for me. The world must be coming to an end. A cold end, judging by the stuff I'm making.

I made it over to the dentist's to discover that somehow I had gotten the appointment time off by an hour. T and the Evil Genius were still waiting, but it's not too bad - the dentist had blocks to play with and comfy couches to sit on.

Bird has several loose teeth in his head. When the dental tech rolled Bird's upper lip up to inspect them, I was horrified. Another mother-of-the-year moment - eww! he has an abscess on the gum above his loose top tooth. Oh, blech. And I didn't even notice it, and that's the kind of thing you'd think a mum would see!

Well, it turns out that the abscess isn't because we're horrible parents who don't take care of our son's dental well being. No, it turns out that the teeth just need to come out faster - they've been loose for a couple of months now and they need help. So now we need to encourage the little guy to wiggle his teeth.

I know, right? When do you have to tell a kid to wiggle loose teeth? How weird is that?

And we are to leave the abscess alone. Easier said than done - at the very least I want to poke the thing with the toothbrush, or a tooth pick or a pin or...umm...sorry. I don't like the sit-and-wait philosphy...I am proactive about these things and want to get it dealt with. Plus it's...icky.

So here I sit with twitchy fingers wanting to yank a tooth out of my kid's head so the abscess goes away, or at least drain the yucky thing, and I have to sit on my hands to keep from mucking with it.

Sigh. Ain't motherhood grand??

Full Circle

Can you see what's missing here?

If you can, you're a better mum than I, who didn't notice for almost a whole day.

Yes, that's right. An entire day.

It would help if the kid got excited over these things, but he's so laid back about his body, he's so knowledgeable about how it grows and changes (all those anatomy lessons he demanded - I won't have anything left to teach him, come puberty), that he just takes it all in stride. I bet if his arm fell off, he'd shrug his remaining shoulder and assume a new one will grow in eventually.
Yes, my little Evil Genius lost a tooth. He lost it last night while we were at our regular Black Hat Society meeting, which is really more of a play group for our motley collection of boys at the moment. Apparently, he saw it fall out, but didn't feel the need to share that with me. I never knew the dang thing was even loose!

M has promised to look for it and save it if she or R (her husband) happens to find it. I'd kind of like it, but I'm not holding my breath. Look how tiny those teeth are!!

I didn't notice last night as we packed up to come home, or in the car, or as he yelled at me for making him go to bed at the obscenely early hour of one-o'clock, when a really good mum would let him stay up until at least dawn.

I didn't notice it this morning when he was downing homemade blueberry pancakes like he hadn't eaten in a month (Six? Six blueberry pancakes? I ask you, where does he put them??) - no, I thought a blueberry skin had gotten caught on his tooth...and I didn't even tell him to go brush, so double boo on me!

I didn't notice while he serenaded me with "I loooove youuuuuu...I'll love you until the end, which will never come...it's all about youuuu....I love youuuuuuu......"

I didn't notice it this afternoon while we sat together and read his new dinosaur book and shared some 'Nilla Wafers, or when we were playing Nintendo together (I play, he helps, and I already know why I'm a bad mum for this so don't press yourself to point it all out to me, thanks). Nope, not until late afternoon did I notice that what I'd thought was a blueberry skin was still there and decidedly not blueberry looking. He obligingly opened his mouth for my inspection, and explained when and where he'd lost his tooth.

And I missed it.

I'm bummed - I would have liked to have the tooth for a keepsake...and maybe the second one to make a pair of earrings...kidding! Or maybe not...

I'm a sentimental critter, I admit it, and I would have likely kept the tooth in with the lock from his first haircut (I waited until he was over a year old and it was almost Mother's day, got his first haircut and put the locks into silver, heart-shaped lockets for his grandmother's and me. Yep, schmaltz 'r' me). Now I'll have to hope to snag the second one and pretend until I am old and addled and actually believe it's his first. Sigh.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. When his teeth first came in (the one he lost was one of those), I had no idea. He didn't tell me about it, never let on he was ready to gnaw through tree branches on his own. No, it was an acquaintance who was dandling his five-month self on her knee who let me know he had teeth in. Not "coming in", in. Cut through the gums and rising up apace. And I'd had no idea. He would have been gnawing beef jerky before I noticed, I guess. In my defense, he never cried and he drooled fairly copiously from birth, so it's not like I had a clue.

So it makes sense that I wouldn't realize he was losing one. We've just come full circle.

Oh, and he's not worried about the tooth fairy or anything - we never really went over that, but he knows to let me know when the next one is loose, and to bring it to me when it falls out and I'll give him a prize. I bet I give him something way cooler than the tooth fairy would, anyway.