Corona Virus Quarantine Day #308: Sometimes You Can’t Outrun Those Genetics: Tuesday, January 26, 2021:

Today we had the much dreaded trip to the dentist. Admittedly I hated going to the dentist as a kid, actually, I still do. It gives me anxiety. The bright light, the need for sunglasses, the hideous scraping noise that echoes in your head, the water spraying in your face and of course the fear that they are going to find something awful in there, like a cavity…I detest it all.

I swear our childhood dentist tortured us. Then there was the orthodontist and we simply don’t have enough time for me to even get into that experience.

Taking 5 small children to the dentist is an entire morning or afternoon. Covid really threw a wrench in my perfectly planned dental appointments on days they didn’t have school. To top it off our dentist and her partner had a business divorce and apparently it wasn’t pretty…so it had a negative impact on our dental scheduling options.

So sadly, I had to get all kids from school so we could clean the teeth.

I’m happy to report we were cavity free! I’m unhappy to report that you simply cannot outrun your genetics. These poor children, with the exception of Ellen, all have my teeth issues. But…don’t be fooled…Ellen has had plenty of teeth drama of her own after an unfortunate incident on the playground with that GOD forsaken teeter toter (seriously Sacred Heart families don’t allow your kids on that thing). Two very expensive root canals on permanent front teeth later, I wish I had banned it for life before that incident happened.

Anyway…I digress…Fiona is missing an adult tooth (I am missing two) and has no room in her mouth for her ginormous teeth (sorry about that Fiona). Finley shares the same problem with the small mouth and big teeth thing and the dentist suggested today that he for sure needs 2 teeth removed by an oral surgeon, but possibly a total of 4. Yikes! I too, spent some serious time at an oral surgeon…sorry Finley Joe.

Cooper also has a very small mouth and palate in particular. So his palate expander (I also got to experience that joy) has been in over a year and they still think they will need to pull at least 2 of his teeth to make room for the adult ones.

Thankfully the verdict is still out on Fletcher as he’s only lost 2 teeth, so we can pray her got his dad’s gene pool in the teeth department…but my money’s on huge teeth, small mouth and a lot of time and money in dental and orthodontic work.

Finley and Ellen have already had their first set of braces and will be getting their second set soon (post expensive tooth extraction of course). Cooper and Fiona are currently in braces and Fiona will get her very own palate expander soon (she’s very excited). Hopefully all of our children can avoid my fate and dodge the horrible jaw surgery both my sister and I had to have.

While I am certainly grateful that our parents (thank you mom and dad) worked hard to pay for the expensive dental and orthodontic work and thankful to my dentists and orthodontist and oral surgeon for giving me a big and pretty smile…I was really hoping our kids would win the gene pool and skip all the stuff I had to deal with when it comes to my teeth. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Either way I spent the afternoon with the kids at the dentist. Thankfully, because of a call in advance, there were literally three people working on their teeth, taking their pictures and getting them ready to see the doctor. So instead of a nearly 3 hour visit (like last time) it was shy of 2 hours.

We left the dentist today with smiles under our masks because we were all cavity free and that meant mommy would take us to get an ice cream treat (I know, I know, we just left the dentist…don’t judge me).

The whole thing got me thinking and laughing about how incredible genetics are. It’s amazing how much of ourselves we can see in our own children. Things like their personalities when playing sports or the things they inherently like to do or their demeanors. Genetics are strong my friends, very strong. The good news is Bryan and I are very similar creatures so we are both to blame (or to celebrate) for the good and bad qualities that come inherent in our children.

While I am not a fan of visiting the dentist it was fun to hang with the kids and chat with them in between cleanings and xrays and the ride home celebrating our clean teeth was pretty cool too!