Tooth Fairy Update

Today the kids and I were at the grocery store. The kids were in the cart horsing around when suddenly CG exclaimed, “My mouth’s bleeding!” and I quickly looked around to see if I’d find George Bert pulling up in a cab during a snowstorm.*

* if you don’t know what movie that’s from, you must live in a cave.

Sure enough, the second of her baby front teeth was bleeding a bit. The thing has been loose for a month of Sundays, but just won’t come out. It has overstayed its welcome so long that the adult front tooth is almost halfway in already, just behind the baby front tooth. So during the rest of our stay in the grocery store, I kept telling CG to mess with the tooth to make it come out.

We finished the shopping and pulled up to the lane to checkout, when suddenly CG said, “And I know the tooth fairy isn’t real – because I found my teeth in the drawer where my hair is.”

Now, to a stranger (i.e., everyone within hearing distance in the checkout line) this sounds VERY strange. Hair in a drawer? Random teeth nestled in said hair? Wha…? I was convinced someone would call DYFS on me, under suspicion of keeping random body bits (toenails, anyone?) tucked away in my dresser.

But no, the truth is, a dear friend of ours gave us a cute sterling silver tooth box when CG was born. When we cut CG’s first lock of hair, we tucked it into the tooth box, and her other three teeth are in the same box. We have a little tooth box for CB as well – which only has a lock of hair since he hasn’t lost any teeth yet. There are no toenail clippings in said tooth boxes.

Anyway, as everyone turned around upon CG’s declaration that she found her teeth and hair, she announced loudly, “The tooth fairy is FAKE!”

Of course, me being the awesome mom I am, I burst out laughing and cheered, “Yeehaw – you just saved me a ton of money now that the secret is out!”

And scene.

Cut to: our kitchen, less than 2 hours later. CG is half eating her dinner, half nursing her tooth. I offered to tie it off to a door and swing it shut, and she decided to take me up on it. I showed her a couple cute tooth-connected-to-the-door-bone videos on YouTube and showed her that it doesn’t hurt (miraculously, I picked three videos that did NOT include children crying after it was done). We then marched upstairs, where I tied some dental floss around her loose tooth. She began to panic when I tied it to the doorknob, so I untied it and we came back downstairs so she could hold Denis’s and CB’s hands while I merely pulled on the string to make it come out. Sure enough, it popped right out.

And so did the blood. Oh my, the blood! It was like the Chainsaw Massacre all took place in her mouth. Which, of course, freaked. her. out. We raced into the bathroom where I had her rinse out her mouth and spit out the blood, then we jammed some kleenex to the open wound. Eventually, the bleeding stopped (thank heavens) and she is now happy as a clam.

And now, pictures! First, the whole “happy as a clam” picture.

Follow the “continue reading” link below, and you can see the slightly more unsettling closeup, post string. And by unsettling, I mean “WOW – her front teeth are MASSIVELY HUGE! Tom Cruise and his chicklet teeth are VERY jealous of these things.”