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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Tuesdays Around the World: Loosey Goosey

 
I don't remember losing my teeth, but it seems like it must have been a traumatic experience.  The thought of a dangling nerve or a bloody hole makes me shiver all over.  The thought of pulling a tooth makes me fall a little bit apart.  Could I have actually accomplished such a thing?
 
Mia's baby tooth has been loose for months.  A little bit of a wiggle at first, then a succession of greater mobility leading up to the big day.  I guess that's how these things go, taking so long, but I don't know; I'm new to the falling-out teeth gig.  She's over seven years old and it's a first for us.  For her.  The worrisome bit was the jagged permanent tooth growing in behind the wiggler.  A party crasher, too early for the festivities.  All crooked and sideways in its approach.  Did it mean the baby tooth would have to be pulled?  By an adult?  A dentist?  *shudder*  Maybe the pressure of an upward-bound adult tooth was needed to oust the baby.
 
I kept myself awake over these things.
 
Maybe it's true what they say about first children: the world revolves around them.  (Wait.  Is that what they say?  I never paid too much attention to all of that birth order stuff.)  After all, if a parent thinks and reacts and spends so much energy imagining every step of that child's life...
 
Well, anyway, I worried. 
 
Then she just pulled it out.  A twist and a grimace and out came the baby tooth, bouncing across the carpet, smaller than I remembered it being when it was still attached to her gums.  A baby tooth, missing its baby mouth. 
 
I thought I might cry.  But if she was crowing and spouting her pulled-tooth story to everyone who'd listen, I couldn't justify the tears.  Sure, she's not a baby anymore.  I've known that for a long time.  The hard, calcified evidence, lay before me in her fingertips, presented like a trophy. 
 
Engraved on its enameled surface, smaller than my eyes can make out, was probably something along the lines of
 
Here lies the past.  Lets see what happens next.
 
Or maybe it was something more juvenile.
 
Baby teeth are for babies.
 
Whatever the inscription, you just can't cry over such truth.  So I laughed instead.
 
 
 

8 comments:

  1. Good for you for laughing, but I was stressed over the first tooth as well. Maybe that is comfort? I had to have several teeth removed because I had 3 sets of teeth. Baby teeth (and adult teeth in my case) are indeed for babies. ha! That was a funny line.

    Hugs to your mama heart! xo!

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  2. Oh {shudder}...losing teeth of any variety makes me shudder - though I well remember how satisfying it was to lose baby teeth! But "baby teeth are for babies" totally cracked me up. Congrats to Mia for another milestone reached! What did the tooth fairy end up doing to help celebrate?

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  3. So happy to hear it came out! Way to go mama!

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  4. Such a milestone to lose baby teeth! My kids all pull their own teeth.

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  5. Good for her! So, the next blog from you has to be about her first tooth fairy experience, right? (If the Tooth Fairy is a thing in your household). I'm always intrigued by hearing how other people handle the familiar childhood mythologies like Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, what little traditions different families do or don't do...

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  6. Awww, so big! I think I would have been tempted to cry a bit, too.

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  8. So funny!

    I just made K an appointment with the dentist because she has an adult tooth that's almost fully grown in...right behind a baby tooth that isn't even loose yet.

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Hmm...And how did that make you FEEL?