Merry Christmas with the Tooth Fairy

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We sure did in our family. The kids had a great time and that is what really counts. The fun and funny (now that we are through it) event was just a day or two after Christmas.

We were sitting in our Bedroom watching movies with the kids when the little guy says, "I have a loose tooth" What? I had forgotten how close he is to losing them. Well, maybe blocked is a better term. For whatever reason it has been a tradion in our family to 'pull' baby teeth when they are close to falling out. I do have one sister who swears it is totally unnecessary and not worth the headache of convincing the kids to let you do it and after Monday night I may surrender.

The big guy was a headache when it came time to pull his teeth. Now, he has always tended to be a bit more dramatic than our little guy has been, so I think I was hoping that the little guy would be less dramatic when it came to teeth too. When J. was losing teeth a couple of years ago E. even brought us a string and asked us to pull some of his too. So, with his tooth almost falling out Mom and Dad asked him, "Can we get the string and pull it?" Apparently J's example spoke louder than I had previously thought. Suddenly E was channeling his big brother's drama. You would have thought I was asking pull his arms out of their sockets. Watching him cry, and fuss and after losing my patience (by the way, isn't it funny that losing our patience and losing our temper are not opposites but exactly the same) with him his brother and his mother, and myself. We finally got the tooth lassoed with dental floss. Then with one quick tug it was out. 40 minutes of cajoling, coercing, and pleading, tears, frustration and I admit a couple of explitives, for something that was over in less than a second and only bled for 3 seconds. Oh, I hope the next one won't be such a headache. We'll find out soon enough. E's other front tooth is loose.

Hopefully, though I will weather it better, I get pretty impatient when the kids are unreasonable in their fears and emotions. I know I shouldn't because I realize that I am emotional too, but I don't handle these events nearly as well as I would like too.