No, not President Obama’s first 100 days. It’s been 100 days of the tooth. The tooth has still not fallen out.
When it was first noticed that the tooth was loose it was exciting. We talked of the Tooth Fairy and money under the pillow. We talked about growing up. Which is, I think, were we lost her.
The girl does not want to grow up. She likes being a kid. For her, youth has not been wasted. She is enjoying her childhood, and more importantly, realizes that it is fleeting and that being a grown up can suck. Mainly because grown ups have to do things like cook and clean and they never play with their friends unless plans have been made. Grown ups don’t play with dolls, stuffed animals and they rarely dress the dog in a Spider-man costume. No one reads stories to grown ups and grown ups have to eat the food on their plates without complaining. Grown ups watch the news or the History Channel and rarely watch cartoons except for Sponge Bob.
I asked the Google about loose teeth and children who refused to let them come out. I got stories of parents who pulled the tooth out only to find their child would not come near them ever again, I learned of parents who endured more than 100 days of the child holding the tooth in. I found conflicting reports from dentists, and more commonly dental assistants, who said that it was okay to let the tooth fall out on it’s own and who said it was not good for the child to hang on to it. I found no answer to the tooth.
Many nights I have looked at my sleeping daughter and almost, almost, reached into her mouth and yanked it out. I just can’t do it. I’m not worried about her spending years on some analysts couch talking about how horrible her mother is for pulling out her precious tooth while she slept. I’ve given her plenty of things to talk to the future therapist about so one more isn’t going to change much. I can’t pull the tooth out while she is sleeping because I know it will wake her up and then I will have to spend the rest of the night trying to get her to stop crying. And I really like sleep.
She will cry when the tooth comes out regardless of how it comes out. I know this. The child cries at the drop of a hat. Lately it has been more emotional crying rather than crying about pain. Recently she played the Wii game Dog Island, in the beginning credits there is a theme song about the game. It’s a rather slow and high pitched song that I have a hard time understanding but the girl cries whenever she starts the game because she says it is so sad. The gist of the game is that the dog/character has to find her way back home. I guess it is a little sad.
Yesterday my daughter announced that she was going to live with me forever. She also said she loved me so much she was going to marry me. I was not expecting to have the talk anytime soon, hadn’t really thought about the need for the talk until she mentioned wanting to marry me. My son said he wanted to live with me forever when he was that age. I knew he would get over it and he did soon enough, he is now looking forward to moving out in two years when he goes to college, so am I. Instead of having the talk I simply mentioned that she can’t marry me because it would be incestuous and we don’t do incest in our family. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Since when is a talk about incest any easier than the talk? Luckily when she asked what incest was I ignored her question and just asked if her tooth had fallen out which got us quickly off the subject of incest.
In addition to stupidly mentioning incest I also blew it when I decided it would be a good idea to show her the teeth her brother had lost. I have a little box filled with teeth, they might even be mine and my brother’s teeth since the teeth are stored in a small chest of drawers that used to be my father’s. I suspect if I ever need DNA for me, my brother or my son I am ready. But showing her the teeth was a mistake. How the hell had I gotten my hands on the teeth she wanted to know. Why doesn’t the tooth fairy have them?
“Honey, lets have a talk about incest” was my only response.
Oooh, she’s a smart one, isn’t she?
Heh heh.
Makes me glad I am a goat.
I do with I had an answer for you but I have never encountered this in my family. We were always happy to lose our teeth – baby teeth I should add. We all have our adult teeth….
Pricilla, I need to find another copy of Where Did I Come From, the one I gave to my son was thrown out years ago. I enjoyed pulling my teeth out as a kid. She is a scab picker so I don’t see why this is such a problem.
Have you tried to gently suggest that she could accidentally swallow it. (Wouldn’t that gross her out?
Lola, yes I have mentioned that she might swallow it. I woke her up the other morning by saying “isn’t that your tooth on the floor?” it got her right up in a panic. Great.
Maybe you should take her to the dentist–while inspecting her teeth, “it” might just get accidently pulled out? Then she could hate the dentist the rest of her life…like the rest of us do.
I love how answered her question about marrying you. When my daughter told me that I said, “we can’t get married because I am your mother.” Her reply was, “oh” Guess she got it.
I can’t believe she still hasn’t let the tooth come out! It has to be just hanging on by a thread!!!
Your daughter cracks me up 🙂 Oh and incest? Too funny… She is a smart one!!
Your description of what makes a grown up has only solidified by intentions of never becoming one. If I had a loose tooth, I would keep it in, too.
Jude, just mentioning the dentist set her off in tears and screams. I will bring her to the dentist as soon as it falls out but I don’t want her to be any more afraid of going to the dentist than she already is.
As for the marrying thing I should have said what you said. My first thought was to say ‘girls don’t marry girls’ but since I drag her to all the marriage equality rallies it seems that is not the answer I want to give her. I made it worse by telling her she could marry her cousins, the ones who are steps not blood relatives, which was not the best thing to say either but these conversations just take their own path and I am usually helpless to control them.
SLColman, I wouldn’t know since she won’t let me see it. I have convinced her that she should wiggle it with her tongue however and I hope that helps move the process along. The tooth next to THE TOOTH is now loose too so this will be going on for years. And it seems I get 100 gray hairs for each tooth.
Shawn, If I had a loose tooth at this stage in my life I too would try to keep it in since I am out of extra teeth, though I think it would be kinda fun to have teeth I could take out and scare people with.
Wow. You know you’ve had a bad day when you choose incest over the tooth fairy. Sounds like some dinner table discussions we’ve had. Ouch.
Has she read Hogfather? Terry Pratchett takes the tooth fairy apart (and Christmas, but that’s beside the point). Get her a copy. Maybe she’ll change her mind about the tooth.
Mother, it wasn’t a bad day I just wasn’t thinking. I try to be a few steps ahead in the thought process but must not have eaten any fish recently. She doesn’t buy the whole tooth fairy thing. She’s pretty much over Santa too. Does anyone know what the tooth fairy leaves under the pillow these days? It was a quarter when I was a kid but I’ve heard some parents say she leaves $5.
My niece and nephew got $5 and that was 5 years ago. I almost choked. I wanted to perhaps loose a tooth and see if my brother would give ME $5 but it really wasn’t worth it.
I thought that was a LOT of money from the Tooth Fairy. But I am probably out of touch.
I stumbled upon your blog a while ago – it seems like a long time ago, and I was amused by the tooth post. Well I got behind on my blog reading and now I’m catching up and I can’t believe the tooth is still there! This is like reading a good book – I can’t wait to come back and see what happens next!
Pricilla, $5 seems like a lot to me but if this tooth comes out it will be worth a whole lot more to me than $5 maybe even ten.
Bonnie, I’m glad you enjoy my weird life, as soon as the tooth comes out there will be something else to take it’s place in my daily argh section.
Please tell your daughter, that some adults do play with toys. The best part of being an adult is that you can buy all the toys you want without your mom or dad going “no you can’t have that, it’s too expensive.” or worse yet: “What possible use would you have of that?!” I am a Barbie collector, and I have friends who I play Barbies with. Some of them have children of their own, and they still play Barbies with or without their children. Maybe not as often as we did as a kid, but with prettier dolls and a loads more accessories! THERE’S a reason to grow up! 😉
My daughter used to say she was going to marry her brother. When I told her she couldn’t do that, she said she was going to marry her Daddy. When I said she couldn’t do that, she folded her arms and announced, “I’m not marrying anybody unless they’re in MY family!”
Holy crap, you need a vacation.
Our daughter found her teeth and then asked us what the hell were we doing with them when the tooth fairy was supposed to have them? The jig was up. We didn’t have an incest story to go to, unfortunately.
Now, our son is starting to question all things magical, which makes me very sad. Maybe I’ll talk to him about incest before he finds his teeth.
Sebastyne, the girl has already determined that she will play with dolls forever. I’m not sure about collecting them since she has already cut off all their hair and given them Sharpie tattoos.
Sherri, I know that the girl would never consider marrying her brother, she can’t stand to sit with him at dinner let alone marry him, of course that isn’t all that different from some marriages.
Mary,Sounds like a plan. I do get a little sad when they start to realize that some of these stories are just stories but she still believes in fairies and making wishes on stars, of course her mother does too.
ROFLMAO…
I’m tellin ya, one night of cheesy pizza will do the trick… 🙂
Stacie, no, she breaks everything into little pieces and then puts the food in the back of her mouth to chew. It’s a diet i think I might try. It takes her about three hours to eat but that’s only ten minutes more than usual.
hi 🙂 http://neslihansonmez.blogspot.com/
She sounds a lot like my younger daughter. Our tooth fairy brings $1. She started at $.75, but everyone said she was too cheap. I got a quarter too and didn’t see any reason my kids shouldn’t get a quarter.
[…] Lost Another Tooth Some of you might remember back in April I wrote about the tooth that would not come out. Eventually it did come out and we celebrated the event. She lost another tooth not too long after […]