tooth scary

when our youngest child was born my friend katie was with me in the operating room {i have 4 big boys all born via caesarean section}. katie is a nurse and requested to be on the schedule to be with me on that fateful day {i love you for that, katie!}. she handed him to my Mister, telling me, "he's perfect except those teeth." ack! visions of a horror movie i once heard about, but was too chicken to watch shot into my mind as i panicked, "MY CHILD WAS BORN WITH TEETH?!" how. unnatural. 

i mean i had read about it i think in a book once hadn't i? but did it really happen? obviously it did. and my little baby had two bottom teeth to prove it. our pediatrician had only seen it once before in his many long years of practice. what about nursing? what about...it all melted when i saw this glorious yummy baby boy. 

scary baby

he was the youngest of my boys to visit a dentist {at the whopping age of 8 months}. apparently in years gone by, dentists have felt the need to pull the natal teeth. my little guy kept his until this past weekend.

a couple of weeks ago the littlest came to his father with a wiggly tooth. he was the youngest of our boys to loose a tooth this early {our 13 year old just had two of his baby teeth pulled they were so stubbornly implanted}. his pops took out the pliers {with the littlest's permission} and yanked that tooth right out. the boy gasped and gave a nervous giggle. 

in our household we are a little fuzzy and noncommittal about santa and rabbits who bring you baskets, but the tooth fairy, well s/he is real {we are noncommittal about the gender of the tooth fairy}.so the littlest put his tooth under his pillow to await his monetary booty that he hoped to find the next day. but you see the tooth fairy was pulling a double shift so she forgot. kind of.  "look here, boy. she left it for you on your dresser. silly tooth fairy. she must've suspected you weren't really asleep so she slipped out without leaving the money under your pillow." but when the boy went to fetch his tooth, it was missing. it seems the sentimental tooth fairy took the tooth {sometimes the tooth fairy leaves the tooth. sometimes s/he takes it depending on how heavy her/his load is that night}.

so last night as we were winding down from a very full and eventful weekend, the boy's second natal tooth was about to fall out it was so loose. i was upstairs reading the most entertaining work of fiction when, "mom, let's tie a string around the tooth and the door knob. then shut the door to pull it this time." {do your children burst into your room talking?} so we did. and he exclaimed, "it worked!"

the tooth that he was born with barely bigger than a pin head was carefully washed and placed in gigantic plastic bag to go under his pillow with the following instructions. "have her leave the money IN the bag." but he had more on his mind.

"mom, last time the tooth fairy only left me a quarter. harry got like a dollar. and harry said i should ask the toooooth fairy for moooooore money. like 25 dollars."  {this is the same brother who bought a soda for a dollar and tried to resell it to his littler brother for 3 dollars}i laughed at the brotherly conspiracy that closely resembled racketeering. "is harry your bookie?" he looked straight at me. 

sometimes i think there is a camera someplace in my house chronicling the lives of this insane brood of boys-as well as writing their lines. 

he rolled his eyes and said, "just make sure the tooth fairy leaves more money this time, will ya? like...5 dollars. make it 4, okay? but tell her this time, i want to KEEEEEP my tooth." 

i blinked, "so let me get this straight, you want the tooth fairy to leave your tooth AND leave you a sizable sum of cash? what does she get?" silence. 

as i mentioned earlier i have been reading a lot of spellbinding  fiction this weekend, one tale about a tooth fetish on the part of a very disturbed troubled little girl so it seemed rather disturbing coincidental that i was lying in bed on a sunday night talking to a little boy about his tooth-into-cash scheme. i tucked him in with a "i will take it under advisement" which is code for "i'll ask your father."

so he went to sleep. and i went back to my novel. 

xo,

gf

p.s. the tooth fairy came. s/he {the tooth fairy changes around here according to who's working our zipcode} left 4 quarters in the bag, "but she forgot to zip it back, AND she didn't leave my tooth," complained the boy.