Sunday, January 22, 2006

Ryland's tooth

These past few months, Ryland had been asking me when he was gonna have a loose tooth. It seemed that almost everybody in his class had lost at least a tooth. He felt left out.

Finally, a few weeks ago, he had a loose tooth. Boy was he glad! He wiggled it with his tongue. He wiggled it with his finger. He wiggled it all the time. It became looser every day. He couldn’t wait for it to fall out.

Ryan said, “I lost my first tooth when I bit into an apple. It happened at school. I got a loonie (Canadian dollar coin) under my pillow that night. I think Mommy put it there. Because tooth fairies are not real like Santa is not real, right Mommy.”

Yepsiree.

But why don’t I remember the first time I lost a tooth, or any tooth for that matter? The experience must have been a traumatic one for me. I do remember hearing stories of tying an end of a string to a loose tooth and the other end to a doorknob and then pulling the doorknob away from the tooth to yank it out. I also don’t remember going to the dentist a lot. When I was a little girl, going to the dentist meant having either a tooth filling or having an extraction. Very scary for a young child. Kids now are lucky that their parents have dental insurance and they have the luxury of twice-a-year visits to the dentist for routine check-up, cleaning and even fluoride treatment.

So, we were having pizza for supper last Wednesday while watching “Lost” when Ryland’s tooth finally fell out. I thought it was the pizza that did it.

“No, Mommy, I pushed it with my tongue.”

“Okay, give me your tooth and we’ll keep it in a container like I did with your brothers’ teeth.”

Now, let us see that toothless smile.


Cute! And what’s cool is that I can see the new tooth already peeking from where his baby tooth was.

3 comments:

Ange said...

My kids don't believe in tooth fairy, even though we still make them believe it, with the loonie under the pillow.

As a child, I didn't receive any coins for a loose tooth. My granny's the one who had to pull it out for me. But I've heard of friends who used the door slamming method. Ouch!

Darlene Schacht said...

What a special day for him. I give a loonie too--lucky kids.

Abaniko said...

he sure is one proud toothless kid. the mom must be happy. :)