Dentist's Office

I really love our dentist's office.  The waiting room has tubes like a McDonald's playplace, there are eight video game stations, a 10 foot tall chalkboard wall, and a toddler building blocks zone complete with TV screen.  And after their checkups, the kids get game tokens for toy-filled arcade games (like at Toy Story's Pizza Planet).  As fun as that waiting room is there's no getting around the fact that a needle full of anesthesia and mouth pain after a filling is NOT fun.  Our CO had dental work--some tricky in-betweener cavities that showed up on her x-rays.  Sure, CO got a mountain of toys, including a kitty cat Beanie Baby she's named "Cinderella,"  but she also got a numb mouth and tender gums!  One of my least favorite parts of parenting is having to buoy up my kids when they encounter pain.  I hate it when I have to congratulate them for being "Such a trooper!"  Because that's just grown-up-speak for "That hurt like hades, didn't it? Now suck it up and put on a happy face."   Grown-ups are seriously so mean sometimes!