With four small children, life gets kind of hectic. Even so, you’d think that when your eldest son loses his first front tooth, one that was damaged as a baby and has been something of a blot on his oral landscape, one that we celebrated him losing as we all sat down together for our evening meal (a rare event on any weekday here), one that we inspected closely as it was so blackened, followed by much peering at his mis-shapen gum and quiet relief that his best friend at school had accidentally kicked the tooth earlier that afternoon (thereby hastening it’s departure and and thankfully allowing proper room for the adult tooth to develop and push through the gum), after all that ceremony, you’d think I might pay more attention, take a little bit more care, when clearing up supper to make sure the tooth didn’t get wiped up with all the detritus of the meal and washed down the sink/put in the trash never to be seen again.
And then having to explain to an expectant seven year old who is preparing for bed – and the visit from the tooth fairy – my mistake.
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Oh no.
I’m happy to forge a note from the Tooth fairy, saying that she knows sometimes things like that happen, and that it doesn’t matter, because in very special circumstances she is able to use her magic to retrieve the tooth from wherever it has gone.
I screwed up with daughter – showing her the collection of her baby teeth and then realising, that if ‘said tooth fairy’ had indeed taken them away, I would not have them hidden away. A lot of backtracking was the answer.
Oldest son lost his tooth on the playground and had all his class looking through the mulch – we found an explanatory note worked wonders. . . .