Brusha, Brusha, Brusha! Puka, Puka, Puka!

Today was Wyatt's 1st official visit to the dentist. Finally. This is a different dentist than the one he visited on his field trip back in February. It is a pediatric dentist and they are totally up my alley. They have a younger child's play area, an older child/teen waiting area, and an adults only coffee corner waiting area. The staff are super nice and very experienced with working with children. They do everything they can do to make a visit to the dentist as pleasant as possible for a child. Well, almost everything, but I will get to that later.

Now I have to mention that the talk of the town is the swine flu as there are two probable cases in the area. All the schools were closed today and will be tomorrow as well. One mom in the waiting area told her little girl at least 12 times "don't touch your face." It was making me paranoid. I was about to whip out the hand sanitizer myself when they called us back.

The first thing they did was take his picture - score - which they then turned into a cute "My First Dental Visit" magnet.




Here he is waiting for his cleaning.




Jeremy was so embarrassed that I had brought my camera. Then I switched it over to video and he was even more embarrassed.

Everything was great with his teeth - no cavities and no cross bite. They were just going to do the exam today and not push the cleaning but I told her that we had been practicing. :) So, she cleaned his teeth with cookie dough flavored paste - eww. He really didn't get excited about it either. While cleaning his teeth, after she would rinse, she would instruct him to swallow. That seemed odd to me b/c I thought they would just suction all that out. But I figured it must be some kind of toddler safe paste and didn't think anything else about it.

So we get out of the dentist with a bag of goodies: a new magnet, a t-shirt, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a prize (tacky plastic snake - typical boy) and we head across the street to lunch. Did I mention that we were starving? Fortunately, the restaurant wasn't crowded at all b/c all the good parents were at home with their children shielding them from any unneccesary risk of being exposed.

So, the waitress brought us our food and before I even had time to open up my silverware, Wyatt began to gag. At first I thought we was just choking on his drink, but then I quickly realized that wasn't the case. He was sick and he threw up directly onto his plate of food. Multiple times. It seems the empty tummy, the nerves from the event, and the swallowing of the nasty cookie dough paste was more than his little tummy could handle.

Here's the classic part, especially if you know me and my obsession with following "the rules." **

I immediately looked at J and said "Oh no - they are going to think he has the swine flu!"

He just looked at me like I was crazy. My child is sick and I am worried about what other people will think. Guilty as charged.

I covered up the vomit with napkins, told the waitress we needed to go boxes, instructed J to pay with cash (I don't want them to know our name!) and high tailed it out of there before the news media descended upon the place.

Of course he was totally fine after he got it out of his system. And I was totally thankful for the goody bag as it provided me with what I needed to get us home - a clean t-shirt and an empty bag :)


** Once upon a time, I rented a SUV to take a group of us to FL and there were only 2 rental agency approved drivers: myself and my friend Leslie. Well, we weren't driving fast enough so we let Leslie's husband Mark drive part of the way. He gets pulled over for speeding and the first thing out of my mouth is: "Oh Mark! I hope the policeman doesn't notify the rental car company you were driving!" I was stressing out about that the whole trip. They will never let me live that one down.