Dentist Appointment

I know, really catchy title, right? Well, Josh had a dentist appointment yesterday. We've been going every 6 months since he was 2, but we've never had an experience like the one we had yesterday. Now that Josh is able to understand more and communicate more, I had been talking about the dentist and what they do at the dentist's office for a couple of day prior to his appointment. And of course, I did a little bribing - you'll get a toy after the dentist looks at your teeth type of thing (probably not the best thing to say, but considering that he has screamed at his last 3 appointments, I just wanted to get through this one).

So we're in the waiting room, and the dental hygienist calls Josh's name. Josh proudly steps forward and follows the hygienist. They wanted to do x-rays, which I seriously doubted were going to happen (keep in mind - screaming, kicking, crying at the last THREE appointments). But Josh climbed right up in the chair, let the guy put the apron over him, and did all the xrays needed. I thought to myself - wow, this is going really well, but wait until we get to the cleaning part. So, we get to the chair where Josh needs to be and again, climbs right in - sits down and lays back. This is the first time that he has ever done that - we've had a hard enough time with the dentist even counting his teeth.

The hygienist was awesome!!! He explained everything to Josh, let him touch all of the instruments, and walked him step by step through everything he was doing or was about to do. I swear, they need more male nurses, hygienists, preschool teachers, etc. Men understand men better. This guy knew just how to explain everything to Josh and what to say. Josh is a boy's boy. He loves his trucks, trains, cars, etc - so getting to do things hands on is really important to him. And I didn't even have to tell the hygienist this - he just did it. Josh sat through the cleaning, flossing, fluoride treatment, did the thing that sucks out all of the spit, and let the dentist look inside his mouth. And all of this without any troubles, no crying, and no complaints. It was great! The only bad part was that Josh has 2 cavities, boo! Bad mommy and daddy. We need to do a better job of brushing his teeth after he does it. So we have 2 more appointments next month. They said that they're going to try to do a little bit each time, so hence the two appointments.

So thank you Tyler, the friendly hygienist. We appreciate you. And I'm so proud of Josh and he knows he did a good job too. Extra kisses, hugs, and high-fives were given yesterday (not that we don't do that everyday, just extra). He is growing up right before my eyes, and it's days like yesterday that make me happy and sad all at the same time. Now he keeps asking if he can go back to the dentist. Hopefully he'll still feel the same way in a month.

Daylight Savings

I just have to write a quick post on this, but Daylight Savings day really sucks when you have kids. Especially if those kids love their routines - it's only an hour, but it kind of does screw things up for us. Yesterday seemed like it was going to last forever, and today hasn't been much better. Yes, I do enjoy the extra hour of sleep I get - but the kids' schedules are all off. We've been trying to do a little extra time with their naps and for bedtime, to slowly get them used to the new time schedule. Josh is doing better than Maddie. Oh well, by the end of the week they'll be all caught up.

Halloween

I've finally gotten around to posting about Halloween and putting up some pictures. I was super tired and busy yesterday, so only one post got done. But we had a great Halloween. Josh did really well and was super excited to go. For a while he had been saying that he wanted to be a fireman, and the day that we went to go look at costumes - he changed his mind at the last minute and said that he wanted to be Buzz Lightyear! But it all worked out ok. I had these grand plans of cutting out cardboard wings (his costume hadn't come with any), painting them, etc. But that just didn't work out, not enough time. Next year I'm going to be prepared! Ha. Maddie was a little clown. Julia (our neighbor) let us borrow it, and it worked out perfect. We traded costumes (I gave her the one Josh wore at her sons age - a monkey), and it couldn't have worked out any better. Maddie looks so stinkin' cute.

We went over to the neighbors houses first, and Josh at first thought we were going in to play. Because he took the candy at Julia's house, and wanted to walk right in after that. But we said that he could get more treats, and that seemed to satisfy him. We had been talking about Halloween since Grandma and Grandpa were here, so he knew what to say. This was our second year trick-or-treating, but the first to where Josh could actually say the words. He did a really good job with saying trick-or-treat, then saying thank you, and even a couple Happy Halloweens every now and then. He had to be coached a little to get up to the doors, and then if the people didn't answer the door right away - he said immediately, "they're gone, they're not home" and would get about half way down the steps when the person would open the door. We had to come home to empty out his bag once and go pee. Then daddy and Maddie stayed home and I took him around one more block. It started to get dark, and the houses were getting a little scarier, so we headed home.

We made Halloween cookies earlier in the week.

Lithotripsy

Well Brad's kidney stone never passed. He ended up having a lithotripsy on Friday morning. Which meant I packed up both kids and him to drive to the surgical center about 30 minutes away, drive back - get a little bit of stuff taken care of, and then it was back to pick him up. They said that he had to be there an hour early, the procedure would take about an hour, and then he'd be in recovery for about an hour and a half. His appointment was for 9:45, so he was there at 8:45, and then they called me right as I'm getting out of the shower at 10:50! I was thinking that I had until at least noon. So here I am dripping wet, answering the phone, and I had just put Maddie down for a nap about thirty minutes before that.

I already had it set up that our neighbor would watch Josh and I would take Maddie to pick Brad up. I just didn't know what to expect and how he would react to being under general anesthesia - because everybody has a different reaction. Our neighbor was taking her kids to a little Halloween thing, which we had worked out ahead of time, and since I thought I had plenty of time - I knew they would be back in time to watch Josh. Well, as with all things that happen in life, I had to change course. The Halloween thing started at 11 - so I knew that they had just left, so I tried to call a couple of other people to watch Josh, but to no avail - it just didn't work out (thank you Julia for offering to help, I appreciate it!!!). So the only other thing I could do was get dressed really quick, put my hair up, wake Maddie up and take both kids with me to go and get Brad. Luckily he was very alert, could walk, and there weren't too many instructions on what we needed to do afterward. Josh was really good, but a little scared when we went back to the recovery room.

Brad is doing well. He had a pretty good sized welt on his back, followed by a red ring, he was feeling good at first and then started to get pretty sore. He took a couple of pain pills, and sucked it up to go trick-or-treating with us. I felt really bad for him, but he didn't want to miss going out with us. And of course, he'd never really let on about how much pain he was really in. Today is much better and to put it nicely - his stone is definitely broken up into pieces.