The dangers of good oral hygiene

I was sleeping, and it was warm, and fuzzy, and really, really good. I was generally aware of Baby Sam sleeping still in our room. I also knew Patrick and Isaac woke up right before Dad left and were playing quietly downstairs. But I love sleeping and if all's well... From the edge of consciousness, I heard a Patrick voice, "Mommy? Mommy?" (Mommy doesn't move...) "I need a drink of water. The dental floss is too spicy." Uh oh.

We stock mint dental floss in our house. I try a quick fuzzy calculation: How much mint dental floss do you have to have in your mouth before it gets 'too spicy'? I remember little details: my dentist appointment the other day, the container of dental floss lying on the counter. Patrick finds my big water bottle and takes a long drink, then scampers off. Sam hears Patrick and I can see his head poke up above the crib rail like a rabbit. "Dab dah? Bahb dahb da dah!" says Sam, babbling and grinning. I grin back. It's hard to be too cranky when Sam wakes up bobbing like that.

Downstairs I find Patrick with a string of dental floss. He's trying to hide it under the coffee table. I pull the string and follow it around the table around Isaac, around several cars, around the couch, all the way across the room. We find the empty container, talk about asking before playing with Mommy's things, and I deposit the yards of dental floss in a big spaghetti pile in the middle of the kitchen table.

I forget about the dental floss until I go up to get clothes for the boys. I come down and Isaac yells, "Mommy, we're stuck!" The dental floss is wrapped around all three of them, and Paddy's still trying to pull it through his teeth. "All the boys are stuck," Isaac states. This time I'm brighter and the floss goes right in the garbage. Maybe, I think to myself, it's time to start flossing their teeth. After I buy more floss of course.