The Trouble With the Tooth Fairy

I woke up this morning to the sound of loud, stomping footsteps above me, and lots of noisy commotion. As soon as my mind switched on, I sat straight up in bed, grabbing Ted's arm, and whispered, "the tooth fairy!"

Jack lost his 6th tooth yesterday. It's one of his top front teeth. It's been loose for months, and hanging on by a thread for the last few days. It finally fell out after dinner last night, right as Ted and I were headed out the door for our date. We had a great evening out. We came home to a wonderfully quiet house, relaxed for a while, then went to bed. Not once, during the entire evening did I think about Jack's tooth or our tooth fairy duties.

How is it that something can be so far from my mind all evening, yet jump at me before I'm even awake and aware? It's not the first time we've forgotton either. This is the second tooth Jack's lost that we've failed to collect. The first time we completely forgot about it. Jack brought his tooth up to us at breakfast, sullen, wondering what had gone wrong. He and Elliot had stayed up extremely late the night before talking and making mischief in their room. So, we offered the explanation that perhaps the tooth fairy had tried to collect his tooth, but was unable because he hadn't fallen asleep yet. Our suggestion placated him, and even managed to convince both boys to go immediately to sleep the next night, whereupon we diligently fulfilled our duty. But, this time, I remembered immediately upon waking. Ted jumped out of bed, and was able to grab 2 one dollar coins off his dresser and slide them under Jack's pillow before he checked. But, the tooth was still there. Here again we lucked out. Jack felt it at first, but somehow lost it as he tried to pull it out from under his pillow. When he bent down to look for it under his bed, all he could find were tiny white legos. Ted was able to convince him that he had felt a stray lego under his pillow, rather than his tooth. I crept back in later, and managed to get the tooth during breakfast. Another disaster averted. Another huge sigh of relief. Phew... But, we're off to an embarrassingly bad start. Having this much trouble with Jack, our oldest child, with 2 of the six teeth he's lost, I'm very worried about having to keep this up for three more kids. I'm not sure we have it in us. How many more times can we hope to get lucky?

The trouble with the tooth fairy is that she has to have a really good memory, and we don't.