To tell the tooth
posted in OmegaMom, OmegaDotter, Parenting |The dotter is losing teeth left and right. The last one was one of the two top front teeth; this left the second one, also loose, all on its lonesome and able to stick out by itself when her lips were closed. It was cute and adorable. It also became quite wiggly.
At which point, it is my job to supervise the evening ablutions. While both OmegaDad and I get the heebie-jeebies at really wiggly teeth, I have teeny-tiny heebie-jeebies; OmegaDad gets wigged out and has to leave the bathroom entirely.
Of course, it reached that particular point that parents the world over know: it wiggled itself loose on one side and not on the other, and the dotter had reached the pinnacle of impatience. I assured her it would come out over the next few days, but OmegaDad decided to promote the tie-a-string-around-the-tooth approach.
This resulted in severe dithering. First it was "Oooh, yeah!" Then it was "Ewwww, no! Stop it!" Then it was "Maybe I’ll try it." Then it was tears and "I can’t do it!" And all of this was before the string ever reached the tooth.
Like going zero to 60 and back to zero within a minute. Whiplash!
So we abandoned the attempt and the dotter and I headed off to her bedroom for story time.
At which point, she decided she wanted to try it again.
This time, we avoided the bathroom, so she couldn’t see what was going on. Apparently, it was seeing that was scaring her. So we plopped her down on a dining chair conveniently scooched near the kitchen door, took the neat little lariat that OmegaDad had made out of cooking twine, and I slipped it over her tooth and cinched it down almost tight.
At which point, she decided she didn’t want to try it again.
Foreseeing an hour or two of this back-and-forthing, I reaching for the string, saying "Okay, okay, kiddo! I’m taking the string off!" and surreptitiously yanked with one hand on the string while the other was making ineffectual forays at the string-encased tooth.
Pop! Out came the tooth (of course). (There was one moment of resistance, and I had a queasy fear that it wouldn’t work and the dotter would be both in pain and brokenhearted that Mommy was torturing her.) The dotter had one moment of "Owww!" and then realized what had happened. Much surprise and great swelled-headedness on her part: "I did it!" She totally thought that I had really been trying to untie the tooth…
Later on, in her bedroom, I whispered to her, "You know what? I was sneaky. I wasn’t trying to take the string off, I just yanked…"
She thinks it’s hilarious. She has spent the last day giggling about it, and saying, "Ooooh, you’re so sneaky, Mommy!" (Tee hee!)
She now has a two-tooth gap. Another tooth is loose. The Tooth Fairy is soon going to have to make another run to the bank for Sacajawea dollars. I have it on good authority from the girls at gymnastics that at least one kid gets $20 per tooth, and another $8. Whoa. I got quarters. The dotter gets the nice golden Sacajawea dollars. And the Tooth Fairy is running out Real Soon Now.
