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The Tale of the Tooth and the Quarter

Monday evening at dinner, Tad said to me, “Mama, my tooth is loose.”

Well, his top two front teeth have been wiggly for some time, but that wasn’t the tooth he was referring to.  His bottom right lateral incisor was loose.  A couple of good yanks, and I had it out.

This is always a big deal, because then the Tooth Fairy comes.  And Tad knows this.  The tooth was safely deposited in a plastic baggie and carefully placed under his pillow.

The first “incident” occurred at bedtime, when Tad removed the tiny tooth from the baggie to examine it, and then lost track of it.  This caused a 20-second ruckus in the boys’ room when the Webmaster discovered it and bellowed for me, and then promptly discovered the tooth in Tad’s bed.  So that trauma was over quickly.

The Tooth Fairy visited shortly after 1 am, and it was at about 2:30 am when I heard a stirring in the hallway, and then the pitter-patter of little feet in the bathroom.  The Webmaster got up to find Tad using the potty, but also absolutely thrilled that the Tooth Fairy had come and left him “monies.”

Then the second trauma occurred.  When Tad went back to bed and the Webmaster began to tuck him back in, the quarter the Tooth Fairy had left was gone.

So I had to get out of bed, too, and join the search.  Rerun was snoring quietly in his crib, even with all the activity in the bedroom.  We stripped down Tad’s bed and looked.  No luck.  The Webmaster got a flashlight and we looked behind the captain’s bed.  Nope.  I pulled the mattress away from the headboard and had the Webmaster peer down into the hollow between the base of the captain’s bed and the headboard.  He couldn’t see anything (I had my glasses on and desperately need my new prescription in them, so that’s why Mr. Eagle Eyes had a look).  I finally sent the Webmaster, who needed to be at a seminar in the morning, back to bed (and he says I yelled.  I did not yell.  If I had yelled, Rerun would have woken up.  I spoke forcefully), and continued the search with a near-to-tears Tad tucked back in bed.

The problem with losing things when it comes to Tad is that we can never get a straight answer out of him.  We have to be very careful not to give him leading questions, because he will almost always go with the last thing you said, unless he really does know the answer.  In this case, he had no idea what had happened to the quarter.  I knew the quarter had to still be in the baggie that the tooth had been in, because if Tad had taken the quarter out, the baggie would have just been tossed on the floor.  So that gave me a little more to look for, instead of just hunting for a quarter in the bed.

I was looking all along the side of the captain’s bed, and shining the flashlight into the Batcave toy that lives next to the bed, when I saw something.  The baggie with the quarter was in the hollow between the bed and the headboard, and the Webmaster hadn’t seen it because it was lying flat.  I got a stick and fished it out through the side of the bed.  When I handed it to Tad, his eyes welled up with tears.  He was SO relieved.  He even got up and ran to show his Dad that the quarter was found.

We immediately deposited the quarter in his piggy bank and I tucked him back into bed, the trauma over.  I finally stumbled back into bed around 3:15 am.

Tad got up happy and went to school happy, eagerly showing his bus driver that he had lost another tooth.  I walked home from the bus stop and started drinking coffee.  Three mugfulls later, I was able to get some chores done.  But I ended up taking a nap at the same time as Rerun, before the kids got home from school.

And so ends the Tale of the Tooth and the Quarter.

2 Responses to “The Tale of the Tooth and the Quarter”

  1. linda
    May 16th, 2012 07:08
    1

    Another ‘Priceless’ moment in Tad’s Life!
    And, Thank you for letting me having a ‘deja vu’ memory!

  2. Ressis
    May 16th, 2012 13:39
    2

    No pictures of a toothless grin? Why do you think I come here?