I'm not above a bit of bribery

For a month or so now, both G. and L. have had bizarre teeth-things going on. On both girls, the front four adult teeth grew in, but failed to completely dissolve the roots of the baby teeth. Instead, the adult teeth merely pushed the baby teeth forward so that they just stuck forward, especially the top ones. It looked very odd and as if the girls were perpetually wearing fake Halloween teeth. Last week A. was by and bribed both girls with candy if she could pull out one of the teeth. They adore A. and she can get away with things that no one else can... such as pulling out teeth. This left G. with three to go and L. with one.

Now I need to tell you a seemingly unrelated story.

Last week G. and L. accompanied me to the grocery store to pick-up some prescriptions. As you probably know the Cubs are doing quite well these days, so there is a plethora of Cubs related items for sale. When the girls and I walked into the grocery store a full end cap of Cubs items was the first thing to greet us. L. sees it, stops dead in her tracks and just stares with her mouth hanging open. Clearly, the fact that you could buy so many different things related to Cubs baseball was news to her. She eventually raises her arm, points at the display all the while saying, "I need that," over and over. We spent quite a bit of time looking at each item. I pointed out she could save her money to buy one of these miraculous things. Finally she settled down to a package of baseball cards. (This was far better than the framed picture of Wrigley Field which cost three times the amount of the cards.) You should also be impressed that I didn't cave in right there and buy them for her.

For the past week, she has been counting her money and working to earn money to buy the coveted baseball cards. While she was doing this, I was becoming increasingly bothered by the silly tooth poking out of each girl's mouth. I told L. that if she got that tooth out, I would pitch-in the rest of the money she needed for the cards. Yesterday was spent with L. having a piece of dental floss which was tied around the tooth, hanging out of her mouth. She spent the day pulling on the floss and wiggling the tooth. It was a long day. This morning, hallelujah, the tooth came out. The household breathed a huge sigh of relief.

This meant that L. and I took a little walk this afternoon.




It was far cheaper than a trip to the oral surgeon. Now, we just need to get three teeth out of G.'s mouth. She is really not too wild about the idea of the teeth getting loose enough to pull out and her reply when I asked what she would like as a reward for getting them out was, "Nothing."

Comments

Ann said…
Back in the days of G.I. Joes, I promised my son a Duke Nuke'm (the most aggro action figure he knew about) if he would stop picking his nose. He also refused.
Carla said…
As an accountant, we never called it bribery. You can go to jail for such things in the professional world. Ha! We called it "encouragement". We could be encouraged to get reimbursement checks out quickly if we received ice cream. Ha!

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