The Dentistry Regimen

Curtis was joking to me one night as we were going through the nightly dentistry regimen of brushing and flossing that this is probably the one huge tradition that the kids will remember. It all started when Jeffrey was almost three. I noticed some discoloration on one of his teeth and lo and behold he had tons of work that needed to be done. Apparently his two year old molars had not developed quite properly and there were other problems too. So eight root canals and four crowns later....Anyway, Jeffrey later had to have a tooth pulled due to reinfection of a root canal, but has been pretty good since then. Most of the work has been repair work. But poor Brianna.... We floss, we brush, we swish ACT fluoride and still we cannot escape the work every six months. Now that she has more crowns on those pesky molars, it seems like the amount of work is less, but still... Our dentistry history is so sordid I even got our insurance company to cover sealants on primary molars after I appealed to the dentist review. So, suffice it to say that this regimen is pretty set in stone each night. Now if only Brianna and Sabrina figured out how to be a little more cooperative. The silver lining to all the protesting is that the louder they scream the wider they open their mouths!

Global Warming: This Summer Has not Been so Hot

I am always amused by the long term forecasts for summer in the newspaper when they have nothing else to talk about. About a week ago the front page headline was about the forecasted dry and "hotter than normal" summer. Against all odds, and despite heavy carbon dioxide emissions, this spring and summer has been rather frigid. Of course, this local global cooling was probably caused by global warming! We were sick from February through May because it still felt like winter! O.K. I will be fair, maybe there were five days that were over 80, but the rest was more like 50. Today, we went to swimming lessons in the cold rain, outside. Thank goodness that they heated the pool more than usual. Brianna's lips were still blue about two hours after swimming lessons were over. Well, at this point we haven't hit 80 yet this June and it doesn't look like that will happen for the next week. Ahh, how I long for the heat waves of the late 90s when it was high 90s or low 100s at this point! Then we could spend some quality time at the pool!