Telling the tooth...

Raise your hand if you have NEVER fibbed, fooled or faked-out your kid for the sake of your sanity. Um, anybody? Okay, good. Now I feel better for what I did last night. I'm going to rewind the past week a little so you can get a better idea of how this trickery came to be. My daughter is of the age where she's losing her baby teeth, and it grosses her out entirely. She wants the visit from the tooth fairy, but if it involves pulling out a disgustingly loose tooth, then forget it. This particular tooth had been hanging on for over a week, looking disturbingly like a fang. Well, as luck would have it, the one time they are going to stay overnight at my mom's without me, is the day the diva loses her tooth. I made sure to send all the things the Tooth Fairy would need to visit Grandma's house, including the little gift (nail polish) and two coins, so she'd be sure she hadn't been forgotten just because she wasn't in her own bed.

She and I like to snuggle at night while we read stories before bedtime, so I stayed at my mom's later than I had planned so we could do that. Both kids fell asleep before I left, so I decided to play Tooth Fairy, rather than have mom do it. I removed the tooth, added the goodies, and as the Fairy does at our house, left a trail of glitter from the front door to her pillow, giving more evidence of the magical visit.  Satisfied that my daughter would awake to her treasures, I placed her tooth in a baggie, and took the container of glitter, put them both in my purse and left for home.

Yesterday morning, she showed me another loose tooth, this one also barely hanging on. I knew it would be falling out soon, so my brain went into overdrive, trying to think if I had any trinkets left to put under her pillow that night. I found a new silly straw and a sparkly plastic princess wand in the secret box of goodies I stash in the cabinet above the fridge and knew I was set for that night at least. However, the tooth had other plans. We were coming home from the grocery store and my kids were each munching on a doughnut. My daughter turned to say something to her brother and he exclaimed, "Hey! Your tooth is gone!" Her hand flew to her mouth to feel around, and sure enough, the tooth had come out without any fuss. Unfortunately, it was also nowhere to be found. We think she swallowed it. She burst into tears, fearing that the Tooth Fairy would never get the tooth once it had been swallowed and, um, "found in the toilet".

Thinking fast, (like all moms do) I told her that maybe she hadn't swallowed it, perhaps it had fallen out and was hiding in her carseat or maybe it was lost on the floor somewhere. ( A reasonable assumption, given the eternally messy state my van is in.) Once we parked, I had her stand up and shake out her clothes, run her hands around her carseat and basically, keep herself busy searching while I retrieved the tooth I had taken from under her pillow at my mom's a week earlier. (Yes, I really did still have that tooth in my purse- another testament to my problem of too-big purses and never taking the time to clean them out.) I slyly dropped the old tooth on the floor by her feet and declared, "Oh look! There it is!" And with those five words, peace was restored to the kingdom. She stopped crying and fretting, secure in the knowledge that the Tooth Fairy would indeed visit that night. She had no idea I'd just re-toothed and it certainly doesn't matter in the long run. I hope it doesn't happen again, but if it does, I am keeping that little tooth around, just in case. For now, it's tucked away in my jewelry box, along with this story, for her to read once she's a mom herself and has to think fast.