Open wide!

Joanna visited the dentist for the very first time on Friday! Luckily, my wonderful mother offered (okay, was asked with kind of a begging quality to my voice) to watch Natalie. It would have been fine to have her there, but much easier with paperwork and such to not to.
The waiting room was small with not much for kiddos to do (note to self for future visits), but we didn't have to wait long. Joanna made friends with everybody, even climbing into another mommy's lap to play video games/watch a DVD player. I let her, as I was busy with paperwork and talking to the office staff ladies. Joanna has a VSD (tiny heart murmur) if you remember, and I had actually kind of forgotten about that with regards to the dentist appointment. I had actually just made the appointment the day before, and it hadn't crept into my mind yet. Used to be, people with murmurs were supposed to take prophylactic antibiotics before any dental work to prevent the possiblity of bacterical endocarditis, but that's no longer the case. In the last couple of years, it has become no longer recommended. They did call Joanna's cardiologist just to make sure, though.

SHE WAS SO GOOD AT THE DENTIST!!! I figured she would be; she really likes people messing with her, but I was so impressed!
I took lots of pictures and posted most of them; I couldn't help it!
Getting her teeth cleaned:
She just layed so still and opened her mouth so wide.
She crawled up into the chair all by herself, picked out some sunglasses, and layed back like it was no big deal.

Everybody commented on how good she was.

Not her best look, but I think I'll hang on to it. You never know when you might need embarrassing pictures of your kids.

Joanna got to pick out a fish sticker and a fish toothbrush.

She had a great time! We'll go back in 6 months for another cleaning and x-rays!

The dentist wants to do x-rays, but didn't mind waiting 6 months. Joanna's teeth are just so close together, they want to make sure (fingers crossed!) there's no decay in between those molars. Poor kid has her momma's mouth. It's a cute one, though. :)

We opted not to cover Joanna on our dental insurance this year, so everything's out of pocket. I'm really really hoping she doesn't have any decay or weird stuff this year. If so, we'll deal with it, of course. If not, we'll be spending just about as much for all this dental care as we would have just adding her to our insurance. I'm sure there would have been copays and maybe a deductible (can't remember). I'm thinking we'll about break-even this year. Next year we can add both girls for the price of one. :) We could have this year, too, but Miss Natalie won't be visiting the dentist this year. She actually may not next year either. Hopefully she'll have more room in her mouth for her teeth. I ramble... sorry. At least I posted the pictures first!