The Dental Chair

This morning I took Mara Kate to have her teeth cleaned at the dental hygiene school here in Rome. They have a clinic where the students clean teeth for a greatly discounted rate, so we decided to go for it.

She even had x-rays taken as well, all for $35. Not bad at all. The cool thing about the x-rays is that we could see all of her adult teeth just sitting up there above her baby teeth just waiting until time for them to make their appearance. A little weird to see two sets of teeth on her x-ray film, but very cool too. All of her baby teeth are present and accounted for and look pretty healthy.

She did really well besides the fact that she completely refused to have her mouth suctioned out and she kept swallowing all of her saliva rather than spitting it out. Eww. She's never been good at spitting and I don't really know how to teach her that skill. Believe me, we've tried. It just hasn't clicked yet. There's always a gulp and then an empty mouth spitting out nothing but air. Maybe in time. Until then we'll continue using the toddler toothpaste.

They had these cool kid sunglasses they let her wear so the light wouldn't shine into her face during the cleaning and she thought that was pretty neat. Also, she got to come home with some floss and a new toothbrush too.

Here's our Hollywood star in the dental chair