As of this morning, I have only three payments left on my daughter’s braces. Which is a good thing because, judging by the way my son’s first adult teeth are coming in, he’s going to need them, too.

Oddly enough, my daughter’s been out of her braces for a few months now. She changed orthos mid-way through her treatment, though, and it took a while for the first office to refund the money we’d prepaid so we could send it along to the new doctor.

That bill still chaps my hide a bit, though: the second doctor performed one — one — adjustment then removed the braces. But his bill was higher than the original doctor’s! Apparently he, like the first office, break the whole thing into segments: installation of the braces, adjustments and removal. Each phase is billed at a flat rate.

So, the first office charged us for installation and adjustment, and his office charged us for adjustment and removal. Which means we paid, basically, twice.

The results are so worth it, though. Being a girl, she’s particularly self-conscious about her smile and now with straight teeth she has no reason to be. Not that it’s affected her school pictures: even the new ones bear the same tight-lipped, “hurry up and take the picture” grin.

My son, on the other hand, is proud of his mouth. Then again, he’s only 7 years old and sees the checkerboard gaps in his teeth as a symbol of turning into a “big kid.” He’s even looking forward to getting braces — something he equates with a coming-of-age ritual, I suppose.

The irony in all of this is that right about the time the Big-Eyed Boy is ready for braces, VH will be ready for at least partial dentures. So maybe that bicycle accident of mine two years ago might not have been so poorly timed since, after all, it got my dental work out of the way long before theirs!

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