Thursday, February 4, 2010

After the first...


I always swore I would never be one of those parents to treat the second and third children any different than the first. My mom took a million pictures of me. She took about half a million pictures of my brother Isaac. And even fewer of my youngest brother Shepard. I planned not to repeat that.

When Olivia lost her first tooth the summer after kindergarten, it was cause for huge celebration. She had barely closed her eyes when the Tooth Fairy magically slipped into her room with a handwritten note congratulating her, along with a crisp dollar bill. The next morning, I woke up before she did and eagerly awaited her enthusiastic entry into our room announcing that the Tooth Fairy had visited while she slept.

Jack lost two teeth last summer after an unfortunate tumble out of bed while camping. That was traumatic. I'm pretty sure the Tooth Fairy paid him a visit, but I don't remember the specifics. This week, after weeks of it hanging by a thread, literally, he finally lost his first tooth naturally. He pulled it out at recess while he was at school this week. He took the tooth to the office, where they gave him a special tooth holder necklace to keep it in until he came home.

Tuesday night, he borrowed the tooth pillow from Olivia, stuck his tooth in the pocket, and put the entire pillow under his pillow. Wednesday morning arrived, and a very disappointed Jack came moping in announcing that the Tooth Fairy hadn't come. I gasped, and threw my hand over my mouth before an inappropriate word escaped. I told Jack that maybe she hadn't been able to find the tooth, since it was hidden so well under him and he was fast asleep and she didn't want to wake him up. We agreed that Wednesday night, the tooth pillow would wait on the dresser.

Wednesday night, as Steve and I climbed into bed, he looked at me and asked if the Tooth Fairy had come yet. Oops...so he ran downstairs and fished two crumpled up dollar bills out of his wallet, took the tooth out of the pillow and replaced it with money.

This morning, Jack was thrilled to announce that the Tooth Fairy had found him last night, and left him two whole dollars!

I fear that by the time Grant starts losing teeth, the "Tooth Fairy" won't even wait until he's asleep. She'll just throw him a buck or two and be done with it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is hilarious! I love it. Isn't it funny how excited we get about the first kid? Everything is so new and fun. Then it's just old news after that. Terrible. I want to say "that's not gonna happen with me." but let's not kid ourselves .. of course it is!

wanda said...

There has been many a time that the tooth fairy has written a note of apology to my later kids with a "bonus" for the time elapsed!

And then there was the time when child #5 was so excited to go with her kindergarten class to the zoo and I couldn't figure out why... then I realized that she had been a baby when we last went and didn't remember ever going to the zoo. *I* had been to the zoo many times...

Anonymous said...

If you forget the tooth fairy for Grant, I'm sure Olivia will take over.

emily, etc, etc said...

So funny! Lily has yet to lose a tooth and I fear that even with my first I may be just as absent-minded!

Unknown said...

I almost always forgot with the girls, and after a while they realized that our toothfairy was a real late comer and super super busy. Although they never minded because they also figured out that if she didn't show up by the time they woke up she would leave a note saying how busy she had been and how sorry she was, and that she was leaving an extra $1 for the inconvenience. It didn't take long before they became disappointed when she actually showed up!

By the way, this isn't Jane, it's her mommy (as I'm sure you guessed)