Smile

There are many things you believe yourself incapable of doing before you become a parent. Things such as discovering the best way to navigate a onesie off of a newborn at 2:00am after a blow out of epic proportions. Or learning that the stomach flu is going around, after you catch the morning breakfast in the make shift cup from the palm of your hands because nothing else is available so quickly. You also become oddly comfortable with the sight of blood in large quantities. Like when your five year old runs in with blood pulsating from a four inch crack in the center of his forehead. The result of a meteor shower into the Buzz Lightyear pop up tent.

To this point I have been very successful in avoiding the dreaded tooth wiggling, pulling, and bleeding rite of passage for young children. As Hollywood started losing teeth in kindergarten, we were virtually obsolete in the process. The school nurse pulled one during recess, he swallowed one before he realized it was gone, and the others he diligently wiggled, bent, rocked, and twisted out on there way to the tooth fairy. There hasn't been one tooth I have to reach into a slimy, salivating mouth for and pop out...until now.

The past three weeks have been filled with corn on the cob less nights, delicate tooth brushings, and plenty of tooth rocking with the tongue. All in an effort to dislodge Curly Sue's two bottom front teeth. But it has all been accomplished with much trepidation. The four shiny quarters compliments of the tooth fairy have not been quite the same motivator they were for Hollywood. Fear has been the overwhelming motivator, or lack there of, in parting with the only teeth her mouth has ever known. She won't let dad near them since she knows he will dislodge them by any means necessary. She doesn't trust Hollywood anywhere near her face. Which means, it became a job for mom.

It started the other night as a ploy to avert bedtime. As I was wrestling the wee one down for the evening in our nightly match, Curly Sue ran in after brushing her teeth and huffed in panic tones "Mom, mom, my tooth is coming out right now. I swear, right now mom, ehh ehh ehh...I'm scared." To which I replied, "Come here, let me see." Wiggling the tooth back and forth between my fore finger and thumb I gently slid my finger behind her tooth, then slightly underneath, and popped it straight up and out leaving the small hole in her gums to pool with a lovely mixture of saliva and crimson blood. Before too much drama could ensue, and before the wee could escape my evening DDT, I told Caitlyn to go get a tissue for the blood and a baggie for the tooth and the tooth fairy.

When she awoke the next morning to find only one quarter, she briefly felt the pings of a wronged middle child, until Logan came in to show her the other three quaters had slid off the mattress and under the bed. Today, when the neighboring tooth became crooked and could essentially be rocked in all four directions, I again reached in pinched the tooth between my finger and thumb and gave the tooth a good yank.

Now, despite the temperature outside being a flesh melting 113, inside the house a cool breeze blows between missing teeth in Curly's mouth. And if you listen closely, you can even hear a whistle.