Zoëspeak
For the past couple of days, Zoë and Miranda have been playing pirates, which mostly means they've been searching for treasure. This, happily, is some trinket or the paper treasure chest Zoë constructed of pink paper and sticky tape (she's extremely clever that way), and they're not rummaging around in my jewellery boxes or the closets or anything.
Today, Zoë was playing with a tall, blue duster. You know, a stick with fuzzy stuff on it that you use to dust. One of those. I thought she was using it as a "feathersword" (like Capt Feathersword of The Wiggles), but as I watched her, she was holding it in front of her toward the ground and making a beeping noise. I finally asked her what it was. She informed me it was a "hunting finder". I then observed that when she "found" the treasure, it would beep much more rapidly. Yes, she was pretending it was a metal detector, but I kind of like "hunting finder".
I'd also like you to know that the earphone headset for the girls' computer is "a computer helmet".
And a final Zoëism for the day, we had a shower and I was doing my hair, which is currently fairly short. I put some gel through it and was running my fingers through to get it a bit tousled. Zoë asked me what I was doing, I said I was just fixing my hair. Then she asked, "Your fingers is pretend to be a brush?"
Toothy stuff
Zoë was complaining of a "hurty tooth". I had a look and there was what appeared to be a huge hole in one of her upper teeth. It looked like the filling had fallen out to me. Naturally, this happened over the holidays, so it's hard to find a dentist, and our family dentist is always booked weeks in advance, anyway. We did manage to get a local dentist who could see her and was good with children, and I took her there yesterday.
Turns out she did lose a filling, but not only that, she's got a lot of other small but growing cavities. Ugh. We're very conscientious about brushing teeth around here, honestly! We also limit sweets and so forth, but it seems not to have been enough... I fear that Zoë has inherited my acidic mouth and my tendency to dental caries. I hope she doesn't also inherit the tendency to gum disease...
Anyway, while in the waiting room, Zoë also pointed to a spot on her lower jaw, on the side (opposite where the tooth with the missing filling is). That was the first I'd heard of it... Turns out she had an abscess! It was so swollen that it had spread into her jaw, and there was a very large lump on her gum! ACK!
The dentist drained the abscess (Zoë didn't like that much, but she was very brave throughout) and we got a prescription for antibiotics to take the infection down, and Zoë has an appointment with our family dentist for later this month (we needed time to get the infection out of the tooth). She may end up losing that tooth, which can cause problems later on when the others become loose and/or the adult teeth grow in, but perhaps when the infection is gone there might be some other option other than extraction. She also got a temporary filling in the tooth that had lost the filling, and that will be taken care of at our dentist.
So how does this happen? I have no idea. I suspect that the abscess came up rather suddenly, although, of course, it had been "brewing" for some time.
There was an amusing Zoë-ism at the dentist. The dentist seeing her was a woman, who told Zoë her name and that she works with children a lot. This pleased Zoë, who was extremely cooperative and very brave, as noted. Later, another dentist came in to offer another opinion and provide the antibiotic prescription. He was a big, swarthy-skinned bloke with a beard. He came in and said hello and Zoë sat up and looked at him and demanded, "Are you a kid dentist?" He laughed and answered, "I work with children a lot, yes." She responded, "Okay," and lay back in the chair again. (You've gotta sort these things out, you know.)
And later, when telling Nanna about the visit to the dentist, Nanna asked, "What did the dentist do?" expecting to hear about the quite uncomfortable draining of the abscess or similar. Zoë, however, answered, "The dentist helped me." This is exactly what we want to hear. Yes, there was a bit of pain involved, but it was helping. I'm glad Zoë understands that.
She did score a helium balloon, a bag of goodies (including toothpaste and a toothbrush), and while there I picked up a couple of electric toothbrushes for them (the dentist suggested that it might help), so as far as she was concerned, the trip was mostly for the purpose of acquiring goodies.
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