What a dreadful waste of a sunny afternoon...

At Elf's last dentist appointment, the dentist confirmed my fears that the "baby root canal" had not worked, and that he now had an abcess. I have since heard that only about 50% of baby root canals work! Anyhow, he refused to let the dentist get near him with novocaine, so we asked to be referred to a specialist that could give him laughing gas instead. Got our referral, went through our health insurance, which gave us a different referral. So off we went today, nearly all the way to the other end of the county. I had made a pot of my curried lentil soup so that Elf would have a nice soft dinner. We got there, filled out all the paperwork, and... first, they were given the wrong tooth in their referral, and the insurance gave them permission for only that wrong tooth (it's one he won't have until his wisdom teeth come in). Then, it turns out they don't do sedation, and wanted to refer us right back to our regular dentist office, which I am switching out of as soon as possible. I'm sorry, but FIVE hours to check and clean two children's teeth? Okay, four hours of that, at least, was spent in the waiting room, despite the fact that we had long-standing appointments for both kids. Plus, they lost Elf's x-rays when I went to pick them up, finally reprinted them, and the second dentist said they were the worst x-rays he had seen. So, aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!! I'm going to call the insurance tomorrow and ask (demand?) a referral to the pediatric dentist that specializes in children afraid of needles, the one we were supposed to be referred to in the first place.

Other than that, it was a pretty good day. Elf did a drill page in math (subtraction), and used his letter cards to spell out words from ETC. Then he read silly sentences from ETC out loud. Fairy and I went through our alphabet and number flash cards, which I never used with Elf, but my oddball daughter likes them. In the truck, driving to and from the useless appointment, we listened to Beethoven Lives Upstairs. After we picked Fairy back up from my mom's, she told me the story of Rapunzel, and told it pretty well.

Also, at work this morning, I ran into a friend I have not seen since my wedding day! Totally happy to see him, and found out he recently got back in touch with a bunch of other people I used to know, so we may be holding a "reunion" of sorts soon.

And that's about it for today.