Such a Big Girl

I’ve been taking Lexi to the dentist since shortly after arriving here in Vegas. Each visit she progresses a little further and further along in the appointments.

Her first appointment went a lot better than I had expected. While she refused to allow the dentist’s assistant to take x-rays, she did allow the doctor to look into her mouth. At the next appointment she again allowed the dentist to look into her mouth, but only allowed the assistant one “picture” of her teeth. The following appointment she finally allowed the assistant to take “pictures” of her teeth only after daddy demonstrated exactly how the film would go into her mouth and the x-ray machine would work.

With this history in mind what happened at her appointment in February absolutely stunned me. We arrived like any other normal appointment without much fuss. It wasn’t long before we were called back to do the initial dental work. This was usually a brief conversation with the assistant followed by the x-rays and concluded with a conversation with the dentist after the x-rays came back. I was stunned when Lexi allowed the girl to take all the “pictures” she wanted of Lexi’s teeth, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

After talking with the dentist we returned to the waiting room while we waited to do Lexi’s cleaning. Again the wait wasn’t very long and a nice assistant came out and called Lexi’s name. I got up to walk with her to the room and the assistant stopped me at the door and said, “No not you daddy, just her.”

I looked at the girl, looked at Lexi and just said, “Well go on with her and be a good girl!”

I sat back down in the lobby and in a few minutes I heard some crying and screaming coming from back in the office. I think some of the parents among you agree you just know when your child is crying or screaming. I thought for sure it was Lexi, but when I asked I was assured it wasn’t her. In fact they invited me to come around and get a quick look in on her. What I saw almost brought me to tears.

Here I was looking on while my kiddo was being so well behaved, at the dentist none the less. I was so so proud of her. I mean you can clearly see that this girl has the cleaning tool in there doing her job and Lexi could care less. It was heartbreaking. This is supposed to my little girl, my little pumpkin! She is supposed to need to hold my hand for everything scary! She’s not supposed to be independent and able to do things on her own! More tears started to well up in my eyes as it dawned on me that my little girl wasn’t so little anymore.

I’m sure there are those who won’t notice, but I figure I’d better say something up front. Yes I am fully aware that she is wearing two entirely different shoes. This was something special like a dress funny day at school deal. So we wore one of each shoe.