Skip to main content

At least I didn't have to lie!

My kid seems to be a little accident prone. A couple of years ago, Jordan fell backwards into a register, thus necessitating a trip to Children's Hospital and subsequent rants about health care. Less than two months ago, she had the mystery injury at recess. Last night, while swimming (thanks to my mother-in-law we have a six-month pool membership at a nearby hotel), Jordan said to me, "Mommy, I think I chipped my tooth." This immediately caused flashbacks to when I was about 10 and chipped my front tooth while going backwards down a water slide (yes, that was a stupid thing to do, but technically I chipped my tooth as I was turning the right way, once I realized just how dumb I was being, so I was probably more stupid doing the right thing). Anyway, I walked over to Jordan, who was clutching her mouth and crying a bit by now. I asked her to open her mouth, upon which I discovered she no longer had her top front teeth. Eek!

For a couple of seconds, I panicked, but then remembered she was seven, an age when some kids have already lost their front teeth, plus those teeth had been "wiggly" for a couple of months now. I already felt better. She, unfortunately, being quite dramatic, did not see it my way, even though she, fortunately, was in no pain. So I resorted to talking up a visit from the tooth fairy.

As you may recall, I am no fan of the tooth fairy. But because this event was a little traumatic for Jordan, I decided I could get over my disdain of the stupid farce, to try to take her mind off this incident. Luckily, we were able to find both of her teeth (one was in her hand the entire time; the kid refused to remove her hand from her mouth for about 20 minutes), and we headed home to find Jordan's (formerly my) little tooth pillow.

We put the teeth in the little pillow and placed it on her dresser, just as we had done the previous two times she lost her teeth. Even though my kid is a pretty sound sleeper, I have woken her up by kissing her, so I don't want to take any chances by putting something under her pillow. Once she was asleep, I debated if I should do something extra, perhaps even write a little note. Earlier, Jordan wondered aloud if the tooth fairy had tiny handwriting. I concluded she, in fact, does, something that helps a messy writer like I.

I decided to throw in two quarters on top of the usual dollar per tooth, and I included a tiny note with tiny handwriting that explained she was getting the quarters for loosing two teeth at once (I considered an extra dollar, but this seemed better, if not cheaper). When Jordan woke up this morning, she was quite excited to get the money and the note. And then she asked me if I wrote it.

I am a horrible liar. I am probably one of the most honest people you will ever meet. Truly. So I replied, "Do you think I did?" She smiled and said, "No."

Phew.

But I am still not a fan of the tooth fairy.

Comments

Mel said…
this made me chuckle. aw, the many ways in which we mislead our children. sounds like it all ended pretty well. maybe J can learn to whistle through the hole in her teeth!!!
Facie said…
Actually, I ended up feeling kind of guilty about further perpetuating this lie. Ugh!

Popular posts from this blog

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...