Our daughter is downright giddy tonight:

A few weeks ago one of her bottom teeth started to wiggle.  I figured it would be a good six months until she lost it, judging by her brother’s loose-to-loss ratio.  But this girl is tenacious.  She has been viciously biting into apples and carrots, rotating it with her index finger, and pushing on it with her tongue.  Her perseverance paid off:  tonight, after we picked her up from a bounce house birthday blast, the tooth was leaning sideways.  It was clearly ready, and so was she.

Without an ounce of fear she propped her mouth open and let me have a crack at it.  It slid out without incident, and it was a first for both of us:  the first tooth she ever lost, and the first tooth I ever pulled.  (Sam won’t let us pull his teeth… he hangs onto them until they dangle in a way that makes one wonder how they are still attached at all.)

Maggie is so excited she can hardly stand it.  First she launched into a story about how she wants to walk onto all of her grandparents’ porches and ring the doorbell, and when they open she will just grin and see if they notice.

“How much longer until Nebraska?” she begged.

“It’s still two weeks!” I warned her.

Change of plans, because she can’t wait that long.  We decided to email everyone a picture instead.  She actually marched up to me with the camera and posed for a photo, which is shocking because usually I get the “Mommy you take too many pictures” attitude.

Sam lost a tooth last week, and another one is ready to fall out two weeks ago.  (Intentional poor grammar to make my point.)  He’d been saving (forgetting) to put the tooth under his pillow, but now that Maggie had an offering for the tooth fairy he decided to put his out tonight too.  As a result, we have two sleeping kids anxiously awaiting one tired fairy tonight:

When I went up to check on them, they were both sound asleep.  To help the fairy out a bit, I decided to poke around and see if I could find their teeth.  Sam’s was pretty obvious, since it was accompanied by a big apology note for being late.  Maggie, on the other hand, had wrapped her entire body around her pillow.  How to get to the tooth?  I cautiously leaned over Sam and tried to slide my hands under her pillow.

After several minutes of gently shimmying and prodding, I still couldn’t find the tooth.  Had she stuck it inside the pillowcase?  What choice did I have?  Like ripping a band-aid, I yanked that pillow out from under her and dumped it out of its case.  Still no tooth.  Was it under her blanket instead?  Had it fallen between the bed and the wall?  Or worse, had she hidden it?  I wouldn’t put it past that child, and I was not up for a midnight scavenger hunt!  I started to desperately search her bedroom, and after 10 panicky minutes I saw it:  a piece of printer paper on top of the Barbie bin.   I tiptoed over (hardly necessary at this point) and saw the clear Ziploc bag that contained the pearly white prize.

Phew… crisis averted!  I can sleep much better now that I know the tooth fairy will be able to find her treasure!