On a Chocolate Diet

Patty Blount wrote recently about how chocolate spurred her to new word count heights, and I would dearly like to engage in a study to see if that would help me, too. However, it appears that I'm on a Chocolate Diet for the foreseeable future.

The Kiddo has a cavity. In a practically brand new permanent tooth. And a cavity that sprouted in the past six months since her last check-up.

I spotted it quite by accident, and it can’t be good that it’s big enough that I spotted it with an un-aided eye.

We brush twice daily, and we eat good and nutritious meals at home (okay, so my mom is spinning in her grave like a rotisserie chicken and saying we don’t have greens every week, but still. No Mickey D’s every week, either.)

I don’t buy her junk food. The Husband does, but not as much as he COULD buy, and since sugar and the acid in many candies contribute to the painful canker sores The Kiddo gets, he’s cut way down on enabling The Kiddo's sweet-tooth.

Still, I groaned when I saw that cavity.

I did what a good parent is supposed to do in situations like this: reduce the candy flow to practically nil, tell her that from now on she gets no more Dr. Peppers or Mr. Pibb or Cokes unless she is eating out (we don’t eat out that much), tell her that she has to brush after EVERY meal and snack unless she’s in school or out of the house.

I’ve threatened The Husband with making him go with The Kiddo to get this cavity filled should I catch them sneaking sugary drinks and snacks again. Since he is deathly afraid of needles, I think that will be enough of a deterrent.

The problem is, I have teeth that are practically as hard as diamonds. Even without using fluoride toothpaste (my mom believed in the benefits of baking soda), I wound up with just two cavities by the time I was 18, and that record has stretched on into the current. My solid teeth tend to enjoy chocolate and the rare Coca Cola (you couldn’t force Dr. Pepper down me even with a nasal-gastric tube.)

The Kiddo, on the other hand, was apparently not so blessed. Even with careful brushing from the time she sported teeth, even with my harping on how certain foods may taste good but are bad, bad, bad on your teeth, her teeth are resembling Swiss cheese.

And that means that, in order to be a good Mommy Role Model, I have to do without chocolate, too. Which makes me cranky. VERY cranky. And inhibits writing word counts, I'm certain.

It’s not that we keep a lot of candy in the house. Still, on the bad days, it’s so nice to go nibble on one chocolate chip cookie, or one tiny little miniature Hershey’s Special Dark.

But how do you explain to a kid that it’s okay for YOU to eat chocolate and candy because you won the genetic sweepstakes, and she can’t, because her teeth genes were sub-par? The pain of that would wipe out any calming benefits I might derive out of say, oh, an Almond Joy.

Oh, man. Suddenly I so want that Almond Joy.