Four days in to Ellie's kindergarten career and things are going pretty well (unless you count the fact that Ethan just accidentally spilled his bowl of animal crackers on the couch). Ellie seems to be thriving. She even got awarded three good citizenship points by her teacher yesterday! If she makes it to 100, she can wear her pajamas to school. By the time 4:00 pm rolls around each day, Ethan and I are super excited to get to hear everything about her day. Of course, there's the mild inconvenience of having to wait in the car line for about 30 minutes before Ellie can finally climb inside the Traverse. That can't really be helped though.
In between Ellie going to school and Ethan and me picking her up, there's plenty of excitement to be had. While the past several days have included park trips and the ever-exciting trip to a thrift store, today reached a new level of excitement. That's right, today we went to the dentist's office! I'm willing to concede that a dentist visit isn't exactly the thing to help someone break out of the doldrums. However, this was definitely an out of the ordinary visit for several reason.
The first reason this was a different visit to the dentist was that this would be my first time having a check-up with Ethan in tow. Ellie was near Ethan's age the first time she accompanied me to a dentist appointment and it went fantastic. She patiently waited in a kid-sized camping chair while my teeth were cleaned. She even rubbed my hand to make sure I wasn't scared before finally hopping up in the chair to get her very own "check-up".
For Ethan's first visit, things went very, very differently. While the visit started simply enough with Ethan excitedly staring at the giant fish tank in the waiting room, it was a different story once we retreated back to the exam room. The first thing my hygienist did was bring Ethan a kid-sized camping chair. While that seems like an innocent gesture, it was anything but to Ethan. To him, it was a declaration of war and an indictment upon his independence. The first thing he did was start screaming. Then, he angrily threw the camping chair on the floor. Then, for his coup de grace, he flung himself down onto the floor and began kicking and screaming.
At this point, I had pretty much resigned myself to finding a new dentist because I doubted we would ever be allowed back in Zone Rosa, let alone the dentist's office. However, before leaving in shame, I first attempted to calm Ethan. I figured out pretty quickly that the reason for his anger was that he wasn't allowed to get the camping chair he was meant to sit in on his own. Once the egregious camping chair left the room, Ethan began to calm slightly. Then, when I offered him my phone to watch "Cocomelon" on during my exam, he calmed even more. Finally, he was willing to climb onto a spare stool in the corner of the exam room for the duration of my appointment. There he sat, watching "Cocomelon" while my teeth were cleaned.
One thing that did help. As we were leaving, rather than shame me for being an abject failure as a parent, my hygienist instead complimented me on being able to figure out what was going on with Ethan and for getting him calmed down. While it hardly fixed the embarrassment of what had occurred, it definitely did make me feel as if I'll be welcomed back. However, we'll have to see once March gets here if I am indeed allowed to return to Zona Rosa Dental or if I'll be in the market for a new dentist. Time will ultimately tell.
#DaddyWrite
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