The Tooth Fairy Messes Up

Julia lost tooth #5 last night, much to her excitement. Although the tooth did come out on its own, there was a bit of drama leading up to its own natural extraction. I found Julia standing at the top of the stairs outside her bedroom door last night, looking forlorn. "Mama, my tooth is so loose and wiggly right now, I feel like it needs to fall out," she told me. Then I uttered the threatening words that led to complete and utter panic, "Let me see." Yes, I know, what a horrible thing to say. I mean, letting me look at her tooth is akin to torture. How could I? Anyway, fifteen minutes later, after going rigid with fear and anxiety, refusing to let me even look in her mouth or wiggle her tooth, Julia decided she was ready to go back to bed. "I think I just want to swallow it in my sleep," she told me. "But then the tooth fairy won't know you lost a tooth, and you won't get your dollar!" I foolishly informed her, ignorantly assuming she would play along, despite the fact that months ago, when she asked me if the Tooth Fairy is real, I told her the truth.

"Mom!" she chided me. "The Tooth Fairy is NOT REAL! You told me that!"

Since the Tooth Fairy idea didn't entice her to let me gently wiggle her tooth free, I let her go back up to her bedroom. A few minutes later, she emerged with a big gap in her upper row of teeth, triumphantly holding her tooth. She then insisted that we put the tooth in an envelope to put under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy. Hmm. I was tempted to just give her the dollar then and there, but didn't want to spoil the fun. Unfortunately, I let Ethan deal with the dollar under the pillow after she'd fallen asleep, and he made a critical error: I have always removed the envelope, whereas he simply exchanged the tooth for the dollar inside the envelope. This morning, Julia seemed completely let down.

"Uh, Mooooom!" she called from her room. "You forgot to give me my dollar! The envelope is still here." After I encouraged her to check inside her envelope, she found her dollar, and was happy as a clam, and willing to forgive our envelope snafu.

With her missing tooth up top, another very wiggly top tooth, and a big gap in between the wiggly tooth and its neighbor tooth, Julia looks a bit like a vagabond, or at least like someone who has been punched out in a bar fight. I didn't comment on this to her, though I did share my other thought on what she looks like:

ME: Julia, you look just like a jack-o-lantern with your missing tooth!
JULIA: I know, Mama, because you can even sometimes CARVE jack-o-lanterns with a missing TOOTH!

Here is a shot of her grinning jack-o-lantern smile:



Madeleine appears to want to knock her own teeth out, given where I found her attempting to squirrel away and eat her snack this morning:



Needless to say, seeing as she can't even sit up in this tiny space, there were soon tears and "ouchies!" But no knocked out teeth, thankfully.