Her first loose tooth! At the age of 6 1/2, the time was right.
I had wondered how this was going to go. What would Joy think? Would it bother her? Would she wiggle it all day and night? Would she even notice? Would she swallow it in her sleep?
Her experience was so different than mine. I was a mega-wimp about my first loose tooth. I had an over-active imagination and was terribly afraid of pain. Those jokes that grown-ups always make, about getting out the pliers or tying a string to the tooth & doorknob, scared me silly. I ended up going far out of my way to keep that wiggly tooth from notice, wouldn't let anyone touch it, barely touched it myself. Eventually it got so loose it came out when I bit into a grape. (Update: the caption on the first picture in my Nov. 8 post, in my old photo album, says that my second one came out on the same day as the first, and I brushed it out with my toothbrush. Doesn't mention the grape. Amazing what we remember, and don't.)
Joy, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice much. I helped her wiggle it a bit from time to time, but figured that nature could take its course.
And then I saw the adult tooth pop through. Behind the baby tooth, like a shark, rather than underneath. Arggh. I immediately had visions of an extraction at a dentist appointment, complete with sedation.
So I started wiggling harder. Several times a day, I'd tell Joy "wiggle, wiggle!" and see if I could get into her mouth to loosen that tooth. It turned out to be one of those moments when sensory-seeking worked in our favor. She soon learned to echo "wiggle, wiggle" and open up for me -- and let me really wiggle it good, sometimes even bloody. More often than not, after I gave it one good wiggle, she'd reach for my hand and show me that she wanted me to do it again!
The tooth was stubborn, but it did get looser and looser. Last night, as I was giving it the big wiggle treatment, it finally popped out.
Look at the spike that thing still had on it!
And look at the big-girl grin afterwards:
We're not doing tooth-fairy. It just doesn't make sense with Joy at this point. We are doing a special homemade waffle breakfast with home-grown frozen strawberries, though. Which I'm about to go and prepare, for my big girl and her proud sister.
10 comments:
Yay! Egg was great at this too, despite my fears.
Oh, and no tooth fairies here too. Utter pointlessness IMO, and could cause many a problem in the teen years. There is so much amazing wonder in this world, (we've been given the Narwhal, yet crave the unicorn!) why we feel the need to go on about Santa and tooth fairies is beyond me.
The special breakfast sounds delightful.
No corn on the cob or unsliced apples for a while ;)
her smile is chooooooo chweeeeet
Wow- that adult tooth IS almost all the way in! Congrats on this rite of passage! Remember when that tooth first came in? It's hard to see them go... :)
That gappy smile looks so cute! We didn't do the tooth fairy or Santa either: BB has enough trouble with reality, let alone doing fantasy too.
Once he found a tooth the least bit loose, GL couldn't leave it alone. He always wiggled it out the same day. Once, a tooth got knocked loose before its time. He wiggled it out. It was months before the new tooth came in. We worried that he would do the same with his permanent teeth, but he hasn't so far.
About the time he lost his first tooth, we read "One Morning in Maine" in which a girl loses a tooth and gets "a special wish" which turns out to be and ice cream cone. We did the same, and it became a family tradition.
I'm glad to know that others are finding tooth-fairy alternatives too. It would have been sticky if Rose still "believed." But she figured out Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy pretty much in one fell swoop a while back, though we agreed to continue to play the game. It's much easier to say "Joy needs a different game" than to say "The tooth fairy comes to you and not to Joy because... uh..."
rainbowmummy, we have some hilarious pics of me as a kid eating corn-on-the-cob with missing-tooth gaps!
Papa Bear, welcome! Our kids span such a range, don't they? I'll have to look for that One Morning in Maine book.
Wow! That is one long spiky tooth!! Congratulations to you both on this milestone!
our girls are syncing their schedules again. rhema lost her second tooth last week at school. her teacher said she went in the bathroom and impatiently yanked it out and threw it in the sink!
what a great grin your big girl has - to go along with her beautiful laugh.
I had a similar experience with Sam this summer. Both of her adult teeth came up behind her lower two front teeth. I made a panicked trip to the dentist and they told me to let them be for a few months and see what happened. Sure enough they came out on their own and her adult teeth are moving forward nicely. However, both teeth just "disappeared" in the middle of the night. I told everyone we didn't need to bother with the tooth fairy because evidently Sam set up a direct deposit account.
rhemashope - sisters across the miles, but with their own special attitudes... I love how Rhema took care of her own tooth!
telemommie - the direct deposit thing made me laugh out loud, and I'm encouraged to hear that Sam's shark-teeth moved forward. She & Joy seem to have a lot in common too... do you have a blog? or want to e-mail me (ElvisSightings AT gmail DOT com)? Would like to be in better touch.
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