Passports, Grass and Teeth

Time spent in queues, time spent on the phone listening to automated messages telling me I'm now fourth in the queue and thanking me for my patience, other phones ringing endlessly with no answer, this is all part of the passport application process, a necessary trial to see if you are patient enough to be allowed out of the country and represent your nation abroad…

Since last week I have established:

1. That I am unlikely to ever have a hope of speaking personally to the Examiner responsible for our application , to see if he would accept the numerous documents that I did send him, without the vault copy of Youngest's birth certificate.
2. That the vault copy from South African Home Affairs may or may not come through in time to get her British passport.
3. That as long as our South African passports come through in time, she can travel on that to the UK, without a Visa and without being suspected of nefarious activities and endangering her entitlement to British citizenship.
4. That stressing about it won't make the slightest bit of difference to bureaucratic procedure, so I may as well stop worrying about it and get on with my work.

Youngest is now languishing on the sofa, taking full advantage of the unlimited video watching that is the sole privilege of the sick in our house. She made it thought the first three days of term in kindergarten (only having to be carried in protesting for the first two days) and then woke up with a temperature on the Friday. Apparently flu is once more doing the rounds, a sure sign that autumn is truly here.

The rest of the family are at the school again this Saturday, building paths, weeding out alien grasses and putting up shade cloth shelters over the kindergarten sand pit. My husband is showing his Leo colours and is on a mission to get parents involved in transforming the school grounds.

We laid 500msq of grass turf last week around the kindergarten, which was previously a desert of dirty dark sand. Magically turning it all green was hard work but very rewarding and we now have proper paths everywhere too, which makes it a whole lot easier delivering a protesting child to the kindergarten door!

Youngest, having just about yielded on the going to school without me, is now fighting a rear guard action:

"Why are you MAKING me go to school EVERY day?"

The other big issue has been that Middle Daughter needs some fillings, not straightforward ones, but in between molars and underneath a previous filling or else the tooth coming out if it is too far gone. Our dentist suggested having it all done in one go in theatre under anaesthetic. My husband is extremely wary of general anaesthetics, so a lot of discussion has been going on over it. We had two options, the local hospital with our GP to do the anaesthetic, or a private hospital further away with a specialist anaesthetist.

A call to our medical insurer revealed that they only cover the costs of children under 6 for routine dentistry under anaesthetic.. . of course. My suggestion of sending Youngest in to have the work done instead, as she qualifies, didn't go down very well.

We chose the private hospital for its, we hoped, superior facilities and more reassuring aspect, then set about discovering the cost. A few phone calls later, reeling in shock, I returned to the dentist to find out the costs of the local hospital. Just the cost of booking the theatre, with some recovery time, costs 9 times more in the private hospital than at the local hospital! So we are now back into discussion mode again.

Has anyone had any experience of dentistry under anaesthesia with their children, or had a seven year old go through multiple fillings with just a local? I think we'll have to do it under a general, as she is very worried about having it done, even though her first and only filling last year was quick and straightforward and she was very patient having it done then. She went into a complete mope for an evening after the dentist gave us the bad news.

And before you ask: we have now started the children flossing, they have always cleaned their teeth, they don't drink Coke, only have sweets on Sundays… I think she is just unlucky in her teeth.

On a brighter note, the sun is shining, we've had our first autumn rain and the air has cooled down. It's cool enough to bake again and we are having a braai tonight!