Mick was absent for a little while today for his dentist's appointment. That didn't go as well as last time, to be honest. He thrashed about in the chair when the hygienist tried to look at his teeth, let alone polish them. As a team, we managed to hold him down to get the front few polished, but he was absolutely miserable. I hope no one was in the next room having a root canal because Mick's screams easily drowned out the Muzak. For making it through any of it, though, he earned two tokens for the prize dispenser and got the best one of all, in my opinion, a clear rubber ball with a tooth in the middle. Pretty cool. The other prize was a blue rubber ball, and his "goody packet" contained a Buzz Lightyear tooth brush and some Crest stickers and toothpaste samples. Who wouldn't love to go to the dentist! Ha ha -- Mick, that's who. But he recovered quickly enough once we were in "the green car." He said he wanted popcorn, so I got him some at Target, as well as Jack's video game. And he very happily went back to school, carrying his prize from Target, a green Mega-Blocks Safari Bus. He just called it a school bus, but there was a driver in a pith helmet and several animals inside with the blocks, for less than five dollars. I was afraid at first, when he saw the display, that he would want a Thomas the Tank Engine character for his train set, three times as expensive as the bus that he was quite happy to get. Oh, and even though I said "Cracken" at the beginning of my notes, Mick actually greeted her upon his return with "Hi, Miss McCracken!" supposedly because I practiced her name with him by singing "Ms. McCracken is Mick's teacher . . ." over and over to a tune he knows.