The First Tooth
We don’t seem to track milestones in Ben’s development so much these days. Some time recently we noticed that he can read silently now (which means Eli doesn’t get so many bedtime stories read by his big brother any more), but the days of noting — and recording– the first step, the first jump. . . those days are long past. (He’s playing basketball now, but we’re not holding our breaths for the first slam dunk.)
But today we had a good one to note: he lost his first tooth! Exactly 5 years, 5 months, and 2 days (thank goodness for baby books) after we noticed his first baby tooth, it fell out of his mouth, the casualty of a big bite of dried mango. It’d been hanging on for a couple weeks now, the adult tooth coming up behind, rather than pushing up from below, so he doesn’t even have much of a gap. This strikes us as quite true to form: our Ben doesn’t do anything without being well and truly prepared.
Above: the first tooth, with a Joe’s O for scale
That is a good milestone. In Spain, we had a different equivalent of the Tooth Fairy, the Raton Perez, but he still brought money. Instead of waiting patiently like dear Ben, though, I started pulling my teeth out for money. (My poor mother caught on, eventually). Now I REALLY don’t know what that says about me!
do you remember Mariah trying to pull one out? She tied a string around it, tied the other end to the doorknob, and closed the door. Repeatedly. Often the string fell off. When, some time later, I suggested to her that she needed to slam the door to make it work, she looked at me in horror. Her plan? “I’ll just close the door and back away slowly.”
Needless to say, it was over a week before that tooth came out!
Ben wanted to save the tooth, so the Tooth Fairy left him a certificate to acknowledge the milestone (and then Ben glimpsed the draft on Tony’s computer this morning, necessitating an elaborate story about the TF using our printer…)
Libby, I think maybe I was visiting during some of Mariah’s tooth ordeal; Violeta, that is very type A+ of you to pull out your own teeth for money!!
Congratulations, Ben!! How very sensible of your teeth to wait until the new ones are well on their way before making their grand exit. I imagine my daughter’s teeth will be the exact same way. 🙂
Congrats to Ben!
I teared up with L.’s first lost tooth–it is a milestone, that’s for sure.
P.S. Love those Joe’s O’s btw–a staple around here!
Wow, that was a big milestone indeed. I’ve been telling Kelvin for a while now that 6 is the big year in which he’ll start loosing his teeth.