This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.
This post was shared today over at our sister site, 5 Minutes for Parenting.
So, we have a loose tooth in the household. It’s our first, and I discovered it a little over a week ago upon taking a closer look at a tooth that appeared to be getting crookeder and crookeder by the day. Turns out there was good reason for all the crookedness – that tooth is hanging in there by a thread. It’s an important milestone – one I romantically looked forward to celebrating with her since the day that tiny tooth first made its appearance, when Bean was about 7 months old.
Still it took me by surprise. It’d occurred to me occasionally over the course of the past two years, as kids close to Bean’s age lost teeth, that this day would come, and I should probably start dreaming up how I wanted to approach the whole Tooth Fairy thing with our children, but as soon as that little gap in someone else’s child’s smile was out of my eyesight, I’d forget all about it. Now I suppose it’s undeniably time for me to get on the Tooth Fairy ball.
Somewhat complicating the matter is the fact that my daughter has actually met the Tooth Fairy. She’s visited Bean’s preschool class two years running, and she is QUITE A WOMAN. She wears a big, poofy pink tulle dress with a matching satin bow the size of Texas above her behind, carries a sparkly magic wand with trailing iridescent plastic ribbons and drives a green Ford Expedition with leather interior. We accidentally ran into her as she was hitching up that pink poofy skirt and hoisting herself up behind the wheel in the pre-school parking lot. She drinks Diet Dr. Pepper and smokes, wears black wedge-heeled flip-flops and could use a pedicure.
Frankly, I’m kinda stymied about what to do with that particular persona, now that it’s been assigned to the Tooth Fairy for Bean by default. I didn’t have a firm idea yet of who she’d be around here, but I liked the idea of “designing her” myself, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have arrived at this particular iteration on my own. I may have come up with someone a little frilly, a tad sparkly, but offset the pinkness and the iridescence with some metal and hi-tech gadgetry so that she’d be exciting and relatable for Peabody when his turn rolled around. Like maybe she’d wear a poofy dress, but she’d drive around in a black Porsche 911 and carry a cool light saber instead of Disney Princess wand.
Bean seems to have no interest at all in actually LOSING her loose tooth. I can’t decide if I should intervene and show her what to do or just let her figure it out on her own. Seems like I never had to be told – I just instinctively pulled, pushed, twisted and wiggled without letting up until each of my teeth was out. I guess I won’t worry about it, because at least her disinterest buys me some time to come up with a household Tooth Fairy plan.
First step, procure an empty DP can and a few cigarette butts to leave on the front porch.
This is SO not turning out to be what I thought it’d be.
Megan also blogs at FriedOkra.
Linda says
I think as parents we are more excited about the toothfairy than our little ones! Oh my daughter was excited when she lost a tooth for the first time 2 weeks ago and put it under her pillow to wake up and find a coin and a note from the TF saying “Thanks for such a clean tooth!”. However, when she came home from school she announced that Oliva (who has 2 older brothers) told her there is no toothfairy, it is your Mom and Dad. How can you not be honest to a 6 year old looking you straight in the eye?!? Oh well, she has promised not to ruin it for her little sister. (o;
jamie says
my son fell an chipped his front top tooth a couple years back and we just had to have it pulled last week. being able to tell him about the tooth fairy made the whole experiece so much better. he was thrilled to find money under his pillow the next morning!!
Slice of Chic says
How exciting! It’s so weird to think of the opposite end of the spectrum… I’m dealing with a fussy one-year-old who’s teething 🙂 You should take a look at http://www.ultimatetoothfairy.com/index.html. I read something about it in one of my mommy magazines and they have the cutest letter from the tooth fairy that you can print off for free (and they have some adorable gift ideas too. Sorry to hear about the bad pedicure, smoking, awful pink tulle dressed tooth fairy experience!
Allison says
Oh my goodness, your description of the “real” tooth fairy had me laughing. She totally does not sound like the one I’d make up. I like your version better, especially the Prosche.
Maybe you could tell your daughter that the tooth fairy she saw was the real tooth fairy’s sister, just filling in for a day. Then describe your ideal tooth fairy. Worth a try don’t you think?
Ivy says
You could take the whole spin like they do with the Mall Santas… tell her that the real Tooth Fairy is very busy around the world (what with it being nighttime somewhere in the world for her to do her work). When schools and the like need an appearance during the daytime, she has one of her helpers stand in for her. Unfortunately, these helpers like to put their own embellishments on the outfits, so they vary from sighting to sighting. This way, you can put whatever embellishment on her outfit appearance as you please.
(And besides, I don’t think the Tooth Fairy would really smoke. She prefers sparkly white teeth… 😀 )
Susie's Homemade says
Those darned kids! Don’t they know that they have to fulfill the picture in our heads?
Debbie says
I have 9 children and it seems they all choose to loose their teeth in different ways. Some rush it along, some drag it out until the last thread is holding, some want dad to pull it out and others play with it all day. Hope the tooth fairy had fun!!!!
http://debbiellbriskincare.blogspot.com/
come check out my anniversary give away.
http://debbiellbriskincare.blogspot.com/2010/05/anniversary-month.html
Jen says
My daughter just lost her 2nd tooth and they have both been quite an ordeal. She was excited about the first one- wiggled and wiggled it to get it to come out faster; eagerly asked me to pull it when it was just hanging- so I did and she freaked- for only a few minutes but that was enough to make her stop wiggling the second loose tooth. On Sunday she discovered that it was really loose and cried all day that it hurt- but it took her until Sunday evening to let me pull- with no effort on my part to release that last little part. Her teeth are going to take forever to come out as these 2 became loose back in FEBRUARY! Oh, my! The tooth fairy has come both times with a shiny golden dollar coin- magical but it won’t break our bank, either. Good luck!