Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Raising the Bar - and Halloween!

I am so excited to be the first person officially blogging for my company, LeeLee Labels! I have always loved writing, so I jumped at the opportunity to be the official blogger for LeeLee. We have some exciting changes coming soon, but I wanted to make this blog be a little more personal, and not just label-oriented. This Mom of 3 has enough going on to blog for several companies!

Today I took my 5 year old son to the dentist for the first time after discovering a HUGE cavity between his molars. Ugh, I thought. This was NOT going to be fun. To my surprise, the office and staff were lovely. I do not remember my visits to the dentist being this pleasant when I was a kid! Anyhow, these firsts inevitably bring me back to my own childhood. First - the Xrays. When I was a kid, my father never let me or my siblings close to a dental X-Ray machine - he always refused them for us. And here I was, leading my son into the mouth of radiation hell. A mother's guilt never rests. The staff assured me that the dose of radiation was smaller than, for example, standing next to a microwave. I didn't want to tell them that as a kid I wasn't allowed to go near the microwave, either. If she would have said that the television emits more radiation I would have felt much better. I let my crisis of conscience pass since I convinced myself that with a cavity that bad (and the toothache), there must be some nerve damage and it would be best for the doctor to see the damage through an X-Ray. Also convinced myself that this was the last time EVER I would expose him to an X-Ray. Damn cavities.

Second - there was a sign up there about the dentist "buying back" Halloween candy. Well. First, let me say that Halloween is my favorite holiday of ALL TIME! I love it not just for the candy, but for the smell of burnt wood in the air, the decorations, the hordes of kids in costumes knocking at my door, but most of all, the excitement and anticipation that precedes it. As a child my brother and I would read Halloween books, watch Halloween shows and basically breathe Halloween till it came around. Maybe that is because our parents (the ones who would never allow X-Rays) were not big on buying us candy either! When my siblings and I returned with our bags of candy, we had a tradition - sort all the candy and line it up. Chips sorted by flavor, chocolate sorted by brand and size, candy sorted into small groups - then line it all up. Yes, there it was. 14 bags of chips, 2 bags of Doritos, 1 bag of Fritos. 8 Mars bars, 10 Snickers, 2 Milky Ways...you get the idea. And we would eat. It. ALL. It took us about a month, even with my Mom hiding the candy, but we went through it. So one year, my father convinced me not to go Trick or Treating. How?  The day of Halloween, Dad said he would go to the supermarket with me and I could pick out WHATEVER I wanted - in bulk - and bring it home - IF I didn't go out that night. I remember bringing home Fruit Roll Ups and other things, giddy with excitement. But when that night rolled around, I was so disappointed! How could Dad take that away from me? I don't even remember eating the stuff I bought. All I remember is not going. Anyhow...back to my point. This "buying back" idea - I get it. I do. Let  the child experience the thrill of Halloween, just don't let their teeth get messed up. Except. Except there is something DELICIOUS about eating chocolate that you got from trick-or-treating as opposed to buying it from the  7-11. So, I have decided, despite the terrible outcome of my son's checkup (for the record - cavities which would have happened without candy, as he hardly eats candy anyway), I am not going to have the dentist buy back his candy. Unlike me and my siblings, my son tires of candy fast, so I can give him a treat every day for a week  or two and then he will stop asking. But at least I will give him that week in heaven...the experience of opening his lunchbox with his friends and comparing what they got on Halloween night. The excitement of trick-or-treating without the lingering thought of having to give it all away. Does this make me a bad Mom? I think not - I just want my son to experience the full Halloween holiday, the before, during...and after. And of course, the ubiquitous pumpkin basket in which he collects his candy will be labeled so we know with certainty whose is whose. Did I mention I have three boys? Till next time...