The first child losing their first tooth holds a special place in a parent’s memory vault. There is great excitement about the tooth becoming loose, wiggling, hanging and finally dangling by a thread before actually falling out. Flash forward to the prom and this kid is no longer your baby.
There’s a fair bit of disgust at examining a real, human tooth rolling around in the palm of your hand, totally misshapen and a far cry from white, followed by fear that said tooth could fall into an open drain and be lost forever or land on a cream coloured carpet, camouflaged until the next vacuuming, never to be traded for toys or cash.
Subsequent teeth never have quite the same thrill as the oldest tooth of the oldest child, especially important in Korean culture.
It also means we have yet another hat (or wings) to don, like we didn’t have enough responsibility already.
That squeaky plank rounding the corner to her room is most definitely going to do this fairy in one of these days. Then what? I wouldn’t be the first impersonator to be caught in the act, making up some lame excuse as to why I’m fluffing a pillow past midnight or stealing the prized tooth or worse, pitching it while whispering, “yuck, this is so gross.”
The tooth fairy in our house brought a Littlest Pet Shop when the first tooth fell out and a twonie for those that have followed.
Unfortunately, fairies in surrounding neighbourhoods can’t communicate, their ears are simply too small but their kid’s mouths are big and a Littlest Pet Shop which was once a solid and might I add realistic parcel for such a spritely young pixie to carry in her wee fanny pack, no longer seems relevant when the checker boards from other mouths are scoring things like ipads and Wii gaming systems.
The novelty seems to be wearing off. There are nights I spring out of bed, sweating and searching in the dark for loose change, hoping to make it into that room before the sunrise blinds us all and I’m forced to try to convince my daughter she’s not really seeing me but is in fact still dreaming.
I’ve heard of one tooth fairy leaving a typed message for a child, shrinking it to miniature size and placing it alongside a miniature magnifying glass. You guessed it, first child. By the second and third, the children woke up excited the tooth fairy had forgotten her scissors and tape on the foot of their beds and had a hand-writing expert quickly determine the note of thanks looked a lot like Mommy’s script on the reverse side of last week’s grocery list where it clearly indicates under ‘items to buy,’ Littlest Pet Shop, cash-back in twonies.
