Confessions of a Tooth Fairy

I felt like a terrible mother this morning. Sage lost his first tooth. He discovered it was loose Saturday morning. We were all playing on the bed and Shepard accidentally elbowed Sage in the mouth. Sage started crying and yelling, "Shepard knocked my tooth loose!!" He would not let me touch it and all morning he held his lip pulled down because he didn’t want the lip to touch it. All the while drool was streaming down his arm and he kept crying and saying “I on awn oo ose eye oof.” (I don’t want to lose my tooth.) He finally calmed down and accepted it and even became proud of the loose tooth. But he still would not let me or Alan touch it. I remember when I was a kid how freaked out I was when I had a loose tooth because it seemed like once the adults found out, all they wanted to do was to try and pull it. So I decided to be laid back about it and let the tooth fall out on its own or let Sage pull it himself.

Well, this morning at breakfast Sage yelled, “My tooth is gone!” It’s true, the tooth was gone without a trace. Alan and I rushed up to his bedroom to search in the bed for it but with no luck. I am assuming that he probably swallowed it in the night which really makes me cringe. We did not mention this fact to Sage. I told Alan to quickly go grab a fiver and slip it under Sage’s pillow. As Sage is walking up the stairs Alan rushes down the hall and whispers, “All I have is a ten!” So I quickly snatch it and shove it under the pillow right before Sage walks in. When he found out that we did not find the tooth, he said, “Maybe the Tooth Fairy came in and plucked it in the night.” So he looked under his pillow and found the money. I will never forget his reaction--so purely awestruck, such perfect excitement. It made me so happy for him and reminded me of how fun it was to believe in the magical. Alan and I just smiled at each other and uttered a silent “Whew!”

It turned out fine but I just felt horrible that I let him swallow his tooth and now I don’t have his first tooth to save. And to top it all off Sage thinks that he gets $10 for each tooth. He will have the most expensive mouth on the East Coast. Hope he doesn’t need braces too!