String Cheese Takes the Writing Plunge and Deedle Visits the Dentist

My little String Cheese is a very smart girl. She is also cautious. Maybe a perfectionist? She often refuses to try something if she is not 100% sure that she can do it. She is in kindergarten and could read hundreds of words but refused to actually read a book for fear of not knowing a word until about a month ago. Finally I found the Bob Books and now her reading confidence has sky-rocketed and she is doing very well.

Anywho...same thing with writing. She would never write anything unless she knew for sure how to spell every word correctly and would usually only copy down a sentence that she had first asked me to write for her. She has oft times drawn pictures for me depicting her angry or sad feelings towards me. But, yesterday, she took the plunge and wrote me her very first note. I am so proud of her. She wrote it during church. For those of you unversed in Kindergartenese, it says, "I want to be with you because I love you." Today I got my second written note ever. It was not quite as happy as the first.

Deedle had a dentist appointment this morning, which was totally unfair to the Nth degree to String Cheese. All three littles had been to the pediatric dentist (that had toys and gave free tooth brushes and floss and let you choose a prize out of a really cool gum-ball type machine) a few weeks ago and it had been a lovely experience, mostly. Loumy and SC had great teeth. Deedle had four cavities. In an effort to not frighten her, I didn't talk much about what might be unpleasant regarding the second dental visit, rather tried to keep it positive when it came up. So, SC took that to mean that I only loved Deedle because she was the only one that "got" to go to the dentist again. And poor little Deedsy. First of all she has cried every morning since our first visit because I won't give her "melk" because I thought her teeth were not going to rot out and now I find out that even that morning-after-7am-cup DID make them rot out. Sheesh...

Anyway...They didn't really explain what would happen when we got to the dentist. I checked in and Deedle was playing a little video game when a nurse walked out to the waiting room and said, "Here, drink this." Deedle did it and was quite horrified at the taste. Then the nurse or whatever she is said, "Keep on eye on her. It will take about 10 minutes," and left. What will take 10 minutes? I "kept my eye on her" and soon she was laughing and tumbling around and asked, "Why is this room so hard to balance in? This is a really hard balancing room." Then the nurse was back and picked her up. Loopy little Deedle just stared glazedly at me.

"Can't I come back with her?" I asked this stranger that was carrying off my daughter.

"Nope," she said pleasantly. "We'll be back in a minute."

Twenty minutes later I see a different nurse hauling Deedle out but only holding her under her arms and trying to make her walk over to the machine to pick her toy. Before I could force my way back there, she had one of those sticky-hand things that I know she wouldn't have chosen if she were lucid. I picked up my little pile of tooth fillings and carried her up to the front. I requested another tooth brush and floss because I knew she'd be asking for those later. I was warned that she might hallucinate, which she did over the next hour.

At home I tried to get Deedsy to relax and watch a video but she was very woozy and in quite a bewildered state which included a lot of crying. String Cheese is very compassionate when it comes to wanting to help others herself. She just doesn't like so much to see me helping and comforting somebody other than her. It was in this setting that String Cheese delivered the second note.
Again, just in case you need any translation, "I feel like I don't have enough love. I am sad. Please be nicer to me."