This is going to be quick, because I didn't get to work until 10 and there's stuff piling up to get done and I've got a meeting in fifteen minutes.

I thought it was going to be a rough night last night, since Alex woke up at 9:15 instead of waiting for me to come and wake him up at 10 for his feeding, but -- miracle! -- he slept until 6 this morning. And so did Penny, which means so did Matt and I. (Well, actually, I woke up at 5:15, and then my allergies wouldn't let me go back to sleep, but at least by the time Alex woke up, I'd had a chance to stretch out my feet and ankles so they didn't scream in agony when they hit the floor.)

The reason I was late for work this morning was a pair of dentist appointments for Penny and me.

Penny's lost a lot of shyness since we were at the dentist six months ago. When Penny's hygienist came into the waiting room to get us, she jumped up. "I'm Penelope," she announced, "and I have di-beats-ee."

She was awesome during her cleaning -- a little uncertain about laying back in the chair while it was moving, and she cast occasional glances in my direction to make sure I wasn't leaving her alone, but she did everything she was asked to do (though sometimes she had to be told twice, when she was absorbed in watching Squarebob Spongepants on the TV), and the dentist pronounced her teeth lovely.

Then we went back to the kids' waiting room. Two other girls, obviously sisters, were playing a video game. "Mom, can I do that?"

"Um... I guess. But I don't know how to play that game, so I can't help you."

Penny plopped down on a beanbag in front of an unused console and picked up a controller. Somehow, she figured out how to start the game -- some sort of first-person airplane mission thing -- and if she didn't know what the objective of the game was, she still had fun poking at the joystick and getting the screen to swirl around.

Is this a universal posture, or what? (If you didn't know she was four, what would you guess, just from that picture? I'd say about eight. Scary.)

When it was my turn to go back to get my teeth cleaned, I asked Penny if she wanted to come with me or stay in the playroom. She opted -- much to my surprise -- to stay. So when I got back, I asked the hygienist to put the TV on the closed-circuit monitor of the room. Penny was... not in the screen. I figured she was probably behind the curtain where the movie was, or at least if she'd wandered off, someone would help her find me.

A moment later, I heard her voice, and she sauntered into the room. "Mommy, you forgot my water!" She handed me her little water bottle, but then wanted to climb up onto a stool and watch my cleaning. She was there for about five minutes and then Matt came to take her to school.

How fast they grow...