dentist

Kyle and Jillian do not mind going to the dentist office at all.  Probably because they come out of there with a loot bag full of goodies.  We all had appointments with the dentist for a cleaning on Friday morning.  Kyle did great, no problems.  Jillian did great with her cleaning as well and was very excited to show off her new gap and loose tooth, but we do have to be more diligent at brushing her teeth.  Actually, we need to do better in general.  We brush teeth with the kids every night before bed.  But brushing in the mornings has been sketchy.  And Jillian (like me) tends to get a lot of buildup on her teeth.  So I'm on a mission to get the kids brushing at least twice a day regularly.  I know, I know...most people do this when their kids are little, and don't wait until the dental hygenist scolds them.  By the way we left the dentist office with 2 new toothbrushes (snow white for Jillian, cool blue one for Kyle), toothpaste, foam airplane for Kyle, bracelet for Jillian, and funky purple star sunglasses for Leah (she didn't even have an appt, but she won them over with her cuteness!).

Since relying on my memory has proven to be an incredibly bad method of getting their teeth cleaned in the morning, I've started a chart for the kids.  We will be going on a family vacation later this summer which means a long road trip.  So, I've done what all good mothers do, I've bribed enticed the kids with the promise of a new DS game for the drive if they can earn 20 happy face stickers before we leave.  To earn a sticker they need to either remember to brush in the morning all by themselves (preferable!), or if they need a reminder from me, they go up immediately to brush without complaining once reminded. 

My plan is the bribe chart gets them in the habit of morning brushing, and then it'll be so ingrained they will just do it automatically, every day, for the rest of their lives.

If I blog in a few weeks about how great the chart system is going, show how many smiling happy face stickers the kids have earned and just generally brag about how amazing my plan was...well, you'll know it worked. If I don't blog another word about this again...you can probably guess what that means.

By the way Leah loves brushing her teeth (you can see here she still has a bit of a black eye from the blood clot draining, but it is getting significantly better each and every day!).

Of course she likes to brush mainly because she likes to do this...

Yeah, I know, my parenting skills are absolutely above par when it comes to teeth brushing.  Don't worry, this is flouride free toothpaste so we aren't causing any permanent harm.