Friday, April 25, 2008

Toofs

Another Memory of France.

It was our last day at the Farmhouse.  Over the course of the holiday, I'd mentioned how wonderful France had been, and how I felt like I was leaving a part of me behind, that I would have to return, and revisit at some later date.  Sort of like "I left my heaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrt..... in San Fran.... cisco..."

Skip comes up to me...

"Mom...?"

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...what?  Agh!  Thanks for sharing, son. He'd wrenched out a MOLAR!

So, Skip left his.... TOOTH... in France.  Buried at the foot of a centuries-old rock wall.


I'm sure the wild boars have already dug it up, wondering what it is, and is it tasty.




Monday morning, as Nate is jumping out of Homer to dash (late again) down to his class, he suddenly turns to me with a surprised look in his eyes.

"Mom...?  Where's my tooth?"

And sure enough, while he'd been showing me his wiggly tooth in the rear-view mirror on the drive down to school after dropping off Skip and Kelly, suddenly there was a space where Mr. Wiggly had been just moments before.

"Open your mouth, honey" I said through the driver's window (I'm trying NOT to get out of the car, so he'll be less late, and I'll be less late with my string of things that I have going on for the remainder of the morning).

And he opens his mouth, and there's NO blood, but there, stuck to his bottom lip is the remains of Mr. Wiggly.

Nate, apparently, is of the "Don't pull them out, let them fall out" school of tooth loss.

So I had him spit it out into my  hand, and he ran off to class, all excited to have something to show off.  His second lost tooth of the spring.

The boy, he grows up before my eyes.

Of course, I was much less nostalgic at midnight, when, having fallen into bed exhausted, and JUST gotten comfortable, I realized that Nate's tooth was sitting in a Tooth Box on his bedside table, and the Tooth Fairy better gird her loins and rise to the occasion with a suitable Second Tooth Endowment.

I only stubbed my toe twice on random boxes, and once on a doorway that I took at too acute of an angle in the dark.



Wednesday was Dentist Day for all three kids.

And it looks like this will be our Summer of Wallet Discontent as we make our way to the Orthodontist for not one, but TWO kids worth of teeth-management.

Skip, he's got this thing where his canine teeth are coming in twisted.  If it was me?  I'd say "Hey, that looks like it'll give you character", but I'm a wimpy-pants in front of Authority Figures, so when the dentist says "get him to an Orthodontist, and see what they can do for that, to fix his bite", I just meekly say "Yes, sir", and file it away as "another thing to do when I screw up the nerve to cold-call someone that I don't know"

And Kelly?

She's had this one wiggly tooth SINCE FRANCE!  If she'd been brave, she probably could have pulled that sucker out and left it behind to keep Skip's molar company.

But she is a Fraidy Cat.  Can't touch the tooth.  It hurts!  Or... it *might* hurt, more likely.

So we got to the dentist, and this tooth is hanging on by a thread and a prayer.  SRSLY.  And the beloved dentist says "Kelly, would you like me to extract that for you?  I have numbing jelly, and you wouldn't feel a thing."

Who can say "No" to cherry flavoured numbing jelly?  Not Kelly, that's for sure.

And apparently when you get a tooth take out at our dentist, he gives you this great little treasure chest box to put the tooth in.

Man, I didn't get that when *I* had my wisdom teeth taken out back in '85.  All I got was a phone call a few weeks later telling me that my dentist had just been arrested, and was going to jail for what he'd done to patients while they'd been having oral surgery.

Joy.

But I'm getting better about my Tooth Fairy duties.  This time, I remembered before midnight.

Barely.

And this time, it was Ken's turn to leave the duvet-covered, foot-warming sanctuary and find quarters to pile beside the child's bed.

1 comment:

mysteryhistorymom said...

I had a little adventure myself, the other morning... Mandy lost her tooth (yes, she STILL believes in the Tooth fairy:-)) and we forgot about it. Jeff calls me in a panic the next morning. So, I sneak upstairs and stick some money under her pillow. She started moving around in bed so I took off. Well, first off she can't find the money (once she gets up) and second of all, "Mom! The Tooth Fairy didn't take my tooth!!" In the future I am living this job up to Jeff... Lori