Toothless

I sent the girls off to brush their teeth and Rachel returned much sooner than expected. She hadn't brushed her teeth yet but she'd wiggled her loose tooth a bit and had to come show me how loose it was now. It was incredibly loose, hanging-on-by-a-thread loose.

We tried to convince her to let us pull it out but she had a hard time letting us get near her mouth. In this picture Andrew promised he wouldn't pull it—he only wanted to see how loose it really was.

The answer was that it was pretty loose.

Eventually Rachel decided she'd pull it out on her own but although she went through the actions she couldn't quite get up the nerve to do it. So Andrew offered to show her how to grip it and yanked it right out of her mouth. Easy peasy.

She screamed and ran off to the bathroom to spit in the sink as soon as the deed was done.

After hyperventilating for a few minutes and gargling a gallon or so of water she was prepared to show off her gappy grin.

Miriam wanted in on the action. She just could not believe that "one of the kids in our family has lost a tooth!"

Rachel put in a little tooth container she picked from the prize box at school (in kindergarten, I believe—she's been anticipating a loose tooth for quite some time) and then worried about whether it would be safe under her pillow or not.

I suggested that she put it in The Fairy House for the tooth fairy to find and she thought that was a wonderful idea. Andrew didn't look so sure about it but, honestly, digging a tooth out from under a pillow is a whole lot trickier than reaching inside an empty kleenex box furnished with cotton ball couches (sometimes Tinkerbell or Silver Mist will stop by the fairy house and leave a note for the girls—the fairy houses never last long because they somehow keep getting thrown in the trash (weird, right?) so there have been several generations of fairy houses (like every time we empty a new kleenex box)).

Rachel was thrilled to pieces in the morning to find that the tooth fairy had left her four nickels!

"Nickels?" I asked. "Are you sure?"

"Or quarters," she said. "I'm not sure which. What does a quarter look like?"

We were talking in my bed this morning and Rachel hadn't brought her quarter with her and I honestly could not tell her what a quarter looked like.

"I...I...I don't know!" I said. "When I try to think of what a quarter looks like all I can see is a giant caribou head floating around in my brain."

That would be what the quarters of my childhood look like. Canadian quarters have a caribou on them. I know American quarters don't but I couldn't recall what they looked like so Rachel went off to fetch her tooth fairy treasure.

"Ah, yes. That's a quarter," I said. "See how it says 'quarter dollar' right there under the eagle's feet?"

American quarters have an eagle on them. Duh.

I, frankly, thought four quarters was a generous sum. I certainly didn't get rich off of my teeth when I was little. I got a quarter a couple of times, I think, but my tooth fairy was rather forgetful.

Andrew's tooth fairy was awesome. He said he always got a dollar—sometimes more—for his teeth.

I'll let Andrew be in charge of flagging down the tooth fairy, in that case. He's much more excited about it than I am.

How funny it was, though, to be visited by the tooth fairy rather than Cupid on Valentine's Day!