For several weeks now, we’ve been waiting for Nate’s top right front tooth to fall out. Let’s just say, it’s been pretty disgusting.
Like a miniature garage door or the hood of a white slug bug… back and forth, up and down, twisting and turning. It’s gotten so bad that you could tell his tooth had actually died and changed color… he looked like a little Chip Gaines.
As our records would indicate, it appears this is Nate’s third lost tooth. Technically he lost his first lost tooth twice. And his second lost tooth once, and now his third lost tooth… well, we’ll get to that. Amongst all this dental detritus, I remember Jacob also losing a tooth.
I also remember the Tooth Fairy going to bed under an extreme haze of exhaustion and then bolting upright in her four-poster bicuspid bed at 5AM because she’d fallen asleep on the job. She recounted the story to me the following day… do you remember that scene in Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise is lowered by a cable into the most secure vault in the world? It was exactly like that. Except instead of a vault it was a shared bedroom, and instead of a weight-sensitive floor with lasers, it was a weight-sensitive pillow with lasers.
The Tooth Fairy tried to pull the little teepee tooth pillow from under the big pillow from under the big head of the eight-year-old whose been plotting his future fame via the capture of the Tooth Fairy since before he had teeth.
After an extremely tense moment with a lot of waking-up sounds and movement, she crouched down next to the bed, with her little tiny arm still trapped under the pillow, while averting her gaze and holding her breath for a full minute. I know, I know… how did her fairy arm reach from under the pillow all the way to the floor next to a twin bed?
Magic… must be magic.
She somehow used her teeny tiny fingernails to eek out that tooth, throw a packet of Pokémon under the bed and bounce. Fortunately, based on her last visit, prizes under the bed is becoming her new signature.
Meanwhile, today at school, Nate’s front tooth finally fell out, leaving a nice big gap and taking his look from Fixer Upper to Beaver. Unfortunately, when I picked him up after Sun n’ Fun today, he told me not only about how he’d finally lost it, but how he’d then lost it.
Maestra Coronel had given him a “Tooth Necklace,” which is a little white plastic tooth shaped box, on a string. Sometimes I kind of wish I spent my days in a workplace where having a stash of Tooth Necklaces was the norm. Anyway, as he was running across the playground, the box popped open and his tooth went flying. Cruz was the last known eye witness. We re-searched the expanse of rocky blacktop and unfortunately, only found two white shriveled tooth-like rocks. Or what we thought were rocks. Who knows how many treasured teeth litter the playgrounds of America?…
Always the optimistic pragmatist, Nate wrote her a note and called it a night. He’s confident that her little magnetic tooth detector will lead her straight to it, no problem. Though a couple of days ago, he was seriously contemplating how she does it all… I mean, “Mom, how does she fit those Pokémon packs into her tiny little backpack?”
Must be magic.