A Mommy Story

At the start of last week, Mira had a loose tooth that had reached that super-wiggly stage but refused to come out. Each day she asked if I’d try to pull it out for her, and I refused, mostly because she winced whenever she wiggled it too much, so I didn’t want to hurt her if it wasn’t ready to come out yet.

Cordy also had a wiggly tooth, only in her case she didn’t want it to come out. This was her silver tooth, and despite all of the trouble that tooth had caused her when she was younger, she loved that it was “shiny” and didn’t want it to go away.

I tried to reason with her. “Cordy, the tooth needs to come out so the adult tooth can come in.”

“Will a shiny silver tooth grow in to replace it?” she asked.

“No, sorry sweetie, teeth don’t grow in silver,” I explained. “Yours has a silver cover on it because it had a weak spot in it when it formed that caused it to crumble. The silver cover made it strong so they didn’t have to pull it and we could wait until the adult tooth was ready to come in.”

That didn’t convince her. She still didn’t want to give it up.

So I should have guessed why Cordy seemed so upset when Aaron picked the girls up from school one day. As they got out of the car, Cordy looked defeated, frown fixed on her face and disappointment in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked Aaron.

Aaron held out his hand and gave me the silver tooth. It had fallen out after school, and Cordy was distraught. Unlike the other baby teeth she had lost, this one was important to her and she was sad it was gone.

Meanwhile, Mira was also sulking, upset that her sister lost a tooth without even trying while she was wiggling away at her tooth that wouldn’t come out.

I tried to cheer Cordy up: “Hey, I’ll bet the tooth fairy probably pays extra for shiny silver teeth like that!”

“Noooooo!” she wailed. “I don’t want her to take it! Please don’t let her take it, mommy!” That didn’t work.

“Ok, ok, we won’t let her take it. How about this: I’ll hide it away until you decide what you want to do with it? Sound good?”

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it worked for her. So now I have a silver-crowned tooth sitting in my nightstand drawer, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to safely get rid of it.

A few days later, Mira got off the bus with a big grin and something hanging around her neck. “I lost my tooth!”

The gap in her grin confirmed the missing tooth as she held up the tooth locket for me to see. At school they put lost teeth in a little tooth-shaped container that’s on a necklace, to keep the hallways free of misplaced human teeth.

Mira was triumphant, of course. And unlike Cordy, she couldn’t wait to hand her tooth over to the tooth fairy for a reward.

That night, as I tucked her in and made sure her tooth was also tucked in to her tooth-fairy pillow, Mira motioned for me to lean in close. “Mommy,” she whispered, “will you help me wiggle my other teeth to see which will come out next?”

No. Two teeth in a week is plenty for me.