I love it when the nurses all call me "Mom"
BoyChile and GirlChile had their first appointments with the dentist today. Nothing brings out the crazy quite so much as a first “ANYTHING MEDICAL” appointment with your toddlers. You can guarantee a couple of things:
1. You’re going to be late.
2. You’re going to need to fill out a metric shitload of forms.
3. You’re going to forget some vital piece of information. (SSN, blood type, insurance card, vaccination certification, credit score . . .)
4. You’re going to leave the medical establishment worried about something you’d never thought of before.
5. You’re going to leave thinking you’re a bad parent because you’d never thought of said thing before.
It won’t surprise many readers (hi Mom!) that I’ve been called “somewhat aggressive” when it comes to making my will known. Must be because I . . . you know . . . tell people what I want.
But not with doctors. Oh no. That urologist could have told me he was going to take my kidney out with a local anesthetic and a grapefruit spoon, and I would have said, “Hand me that consent form and let’s get cracking!”
So my babies are in these big chairs and there’s not enough time (in my mind) to explore the office, or the tools, and the damn Dora the Explorer DVD runs out just about the time the whiny brush starts up, and I’m bouncing back and forth between their chairs, trying to keep a big ole smile on my face because, hey! This is fun! Going to the dentist is fun!
When the dentist with BoyChile demands of me, “how did he break his front tooth?”
How does any kid break his tooth, I wanted to ask her. They’re generally not trying to bite the cap off a bottle of beer or playing ice hockey.
He fell down, I say.
The nerve’s exposed, she said We have to take an X-ray right now.
Now, in an incredible feat of timing, BoyChile took out his tooth exactly a week ago today. Managed to keep all those teeth in his head until one week before his first freaking dental appointment. But no matter – dentists are here to help us, right?
BoyChile was not about to stay still long enough to let anyone stick an oversized coffee filter in his mouth and point a lens at him. X-ray taking thus abandoned, BoyChile thoroughly over the entire dentist-thing, we head back to the chair of doom.
Lady Dentist has been replaced by semi-retired Dentist/Owner of practice, and he’s been called over for a consult. He takes off his mask, gets BoyChile calmed down, probes and wiggles things a bit, backs up, send BoyChile off, and talks to me like an adult – i.e, if the nerve actually was exposed, BoyChile probably would have stopped, you know, eating. And would be crying, like, all the time. My faith in the profession of pediatric dentistry is thus restored.
So here’s where I surprised even myself. When I went to the counter to pay and make BoyChile’s follow-up appointment, I specifically asked for Dr. Owner to do the follow-up. When told he doesn’t see patients regularly any longer, I said that I would take whomever was most similar to him in personality and patient treatment. No offense to LadyDentist, but I wasn’t comfortable with her and I don’t want her hands in my kid’s mouth again.
The moral of the story is this: if we are so goddamned determined to turn healthcare into a business, then patients have a right to act just like customers. It took me 34 years, two kids, and a unilateral nephrectomy to figure that out.
Labels: life lessons, mad parenting skillz
Celebratory Gunshots, Too
As I set about planning the celebration of my children’s third natal day, I had a couple of ideas, none of which involved any place named “Zone,” renting animals that require a support staff or permits, or spending money.
Lucky for me that my kids love running around outdoors and their birthday falls just after Spring’s coming out party. So all I need is a park featuring a wide open field, some balls to kick and toss around, a sheet cake from
Rolling Pin, and we’re set.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going a little too low-end though. Even a slacker mom like me likes a little flash, a spark of cool for the kiddie party. “Kites!” I thought. “It’ll be excellent kite-flying weather! We’ll get some kites for the kids to supplement the ball-kicking fun! What could possibly go wrong with kites?”
What indeed. Labels: mad parenting skillz, Things that scare the crap out of us
I Renounce You, Baby Einstein
Slate has got it right.
Damn, but I dislike
Julie What’s-Her-Tits. Not just because of those 12 pounds of Texas cornfed hair she was sporting, but because the whole Baby Einstein thing is just one giant racket wherein parents are once again parted with their dollars questing after E-Z ways to raise smart babies.
I am loathe to wade into the parenting morass because, as y’all know, I don’t know a damn thing about raising children. The fact that I am doing it doesn’t mean I know anything about it. I did not have to present my I.Q. score or bachelor’s degree before taking my babies home from the hospital. Basically, they scanned our collective bar-tag bracelets, patted me on the back, and said, “Good luck with all that!”
But here I go, and I hope you will be kind in the comments, Gentle (and maybe Angry) Readers:
Baby Einstein doesn’t actually make your kids smarter.
The jury is still debating on whether or not it actually harms them.
But it certainly does not make them smarter.
Neither does listening to Mozart in or out of utero. Neither does eating organic chard and sundried dates while pregnant. Neither do “stimulating” mobiles strung up over cribs.
Neither does taking meth, bringe drinking, or base jumping (parents or child).
Only brides-to-be are subjected to more shameless marketing than new parents. We are damn-near flogged with “must-have” gadgets and gizmos. Woe to you hapless mother who doubts the wisdom of the wet wipes warmer!
And now Julie Aint-This-A-Kick-In-The-Crotch is being held up as the very model of a modern Mother General and American entrepreneur. Well, kiss my grits, Julie – you haven’t done jackshit except prey on the fears and ignorance of parents trying to do the right thing.
And it takes courage to stand up and say, I Will Be a Sucker No Longer! I Renounce You, Baby Einstein! I renounce you and all that you stand for – the ass-backwards idea that I can manipulate genetics simply by pressing play! The folly of the crawling helmet! You may have got me with Stoneyfield Farms YoBaby Organic Yogurt, but you have played me for the last time, bitch!
Labels: ill-informed opinions, mad parenting skillz
Cafe Citron, y'all.
5 p.m.
We'll be the really loud people
drinking rum.
The first official YOR outing would not be possible without the sipping suggestions left by our kind commentors. We'll do our best to make you proud and hopefully, report on the hangover-free results.
However, many suggestions were for "sipping" rum, not cocktails. My goal -- nay, mission -- is to find a rum-based mixed drink that:
1) isn't some color not found in nature
2) doesn't smell like Febreze
3) isn't carbonated
4) isn't overly garnished.
I'd also prefer that it have a name I'm not embarassed to say in front of my 2.5 year old daughter. "Gimme a toe-sucking zombie," is just not something I want to hear coming out of her mouth.
I went to the
Little Red Book for help, but it seemed like every rum concoction in there required egg whites. Is that even sanitary?
Labels: mad parenting skillz, rum
