Flossing her way to a brand new Corvette

Dental floss has apparently been around since 1815, but I'll have to ask my Mom when it was she started my brother and I on a daily dental flossing routine since apparently it should start sometime before your 4th birthday.

Case in point, my youngest daughter's latest acquisition...


The tooth had been irritating her for awhile and even though she was very good about twice daily brushings, she only flossed when she caught her big sister doing it and wanted to copy.

Seeing as how our youngest was only 4-years old, my Wife and I never pressed the floss point on her too vigorously. Surmising that since our 8-year old is a twice daily brusher but only flosses when she remembers - which isn't all that often - and she has been cavity free thus far, we set the same lofty oral hygiene goals for our second daughter as well.

I personally have had two cavities in my entire lifetime (in the same tooth) and even they both arrived during my let's-neglect-our-dental-and-physical-well-being Grad school days. S is a consummate brusher and has only two anxiety-filled amalgam procedures filling the lines on her dental chart.

So as a family, we have relatively strong teeth, and by the precedent being set by our eldest offspring, that tradition would hopefully continue on down the genetic line.

At the dentist, PK's itty-bitty little mouth was too small a fit for our family practitioner to get a good set of x-rays. So off we went to follow the unearthly path of the Delta Dental referral slip.

A very short time later, PK ended up sitting in the comfy chair of a pediatric dentist, happily watching Scooby Doo on the flat screen monitor strategically hanging from the ceiling above her head and getting the first complete set of dental x-rays in her life.

What started out as an irritant became a cavity, that became a probable filling, that eventually became an extraction and ended with some sort of placeholder apparatus in the crater hole where her baby tooth once sat.

So now were on a 3-a-day tooth brushing routine, ACT bubble-gum flavored fluoride rinse in the evening, Dentek Fun Flossers with fluoride after meals, and a space being made on the bathroom counter for our next purchase, a Water Pic.

Oh, and Wifey and I were harangued pretty decently by the cute and perky, twenty-something Asian pediatric dentist for not putting our 4-year old on the Hogwarts Express floss train earlier in life.

So, what you ask did Tooth Fairie have to cough up for this whopper of a deciduous enameled wonder?

Not a thing.

PK refused to hand it over to the flittering trader of enameled goods for trinkets and coins. This one, she wanted to keep, and show off, and possibly use to torment her parents in the future in a guilt vs. consumable goods exchange.

What color did you want your Corvette in PK...dental floss white...haha, very funny.