dentist visit

Today Nicholas got a cavity filled. 
It was the third time we'd taken him to attempt to fix this same cavity.

When we took him for his first cleaning last year, he was a champ. So calm, so cooperative, and happy to be there. I was proud of my brave little guy.

Somehow that changed when we came back to get his cavity fixed, and he freaked. Screaming, crying, absolutely positively unwilling to lay in that chair so they could fix his tooth. 
As he says, he was "Neverly peverly dever" going to sit calmly. 

So we waited a couple of months, then tried again.
Not happening. Not quite the same level of freak out as before, but still way too anxious for them to get anything even started.

Our only option at this point was to come back and do it with oral sedation.  This morning, early, Kent and Nicholas headed in.

And finally, (so thankfully!) Nick cooperated. He drank the medicine, got a little sleepy/loopy, and was calm enough to allow them to fix his tooth.

Unfortunately, by this point, the cavity had grown so much that the tooth had to be capped. He's now our resident pirate, with a silver tooth and everything.

Kent deserves all the credit for the success of today's visit. 

When Nicholas is scared about something, I seem to only make it worse. I'm not sure what I do wrong,

maybe it's because he and I are too much alike and I have little patience with my own anxieties and even littler with his? 

Maybe it's because I'm the mother and Nicholas sees me as a source of comfort, so he does not feel any need to show bravery to me? 

Either way, when Nicholas needs to be brave, he needs Daddy. 

For this dentist visit, Kent bribed him with a cake. 

 After the dentist, Nicholas got to go to the bakery and pick out whichever cake he wanted. 
Kent is a genius.

Nicholas came home pretty dazed, still kinda loopy from the sedatives.
He'd stand in one place and stare at nothing, without blinking, for several minutes. It was a bit freaky.
But soon the loopy, dazed Nick turned into the "medicated monster Nicholas." 

Aiy. He was nuts.
And I felt so sorry for him. And the rest of us.
He spent a good 45 minutes yelling at me that "No, Mommy, I'm in charge!"
Then he was furious that I wasn't letting him into the bathroom so he could make sure Ellie was washing her hands.
Then he was screeching at me because I didn't print out the right Valentine's picture for him, I didn't give him the correct color of cup for his water, etc. 
I just kept my voice low and soft and we tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. Poor kid.

We planned to meet some friends at the park right about the time that Medicated Monster Nicholas morphed into Sleepy Nicholas. 
He fell asleep on the floor as I put his shoes on.

Then we got to the park and he spent the first fifteen minutes doing this

followed by him asking me if he could go wait in the car while we finished playing.

He watched from the windows, opening the door every so often to ask us if we were almost done.  

When we got back home he was so odd, bouncing between angry and sleepy and happy every few seconds. 
I made a craft for the kids, little dragon "masks" made out of toilet paper tubes, because Nicholas was asking me to. 

(I was ready for a nap at this point, and I kept offering to let him just sit and watch a movie, but he refused....so we crafted.)

When the dragons were finished, he was bitterly disappointed.
"But Mom, this dragon is dumb! It doesn't even do anything! I wanted it to breathe fire!"

After he finished yelling at me/crying about it, he asked me if we could do a different craft.
Not a chance, kid. 
I was doing my very best to be patient, but I was done.
So I turned on a show for Ellie, and lay down on the couch to try to take a nap. Nicholas wandered the house for the first twenty minutes or so, then he asked me if he could lay by me.

He didn't wake up again until Kent was already home from work,
and like I said, 
Daddy makes everything better. 

He has to go back next month for one more cavity.
At least this time I'll know what to expect for the rest of the day.
It will certainly include a mandatory nap for everyone involved.