Toothless Wonder

There's something about a child losing their first tooth that puts them into a new realm of oldness. Yesterday Chase lost 4 of them, and more and more I'm seeing my baby disappear. Okay, so he is 5, but he is "The Baby" and I'm hanging on to that for as long as possible, much to his chagrin.

It all began when he proceeded to tell me all about the new teeth he was getting. I knew his 5-year molars were coming in, so when he pointed to a spot behind his four front teeth, he got my attention. Sure enough, there was Mr. Adult Tooth making his appearance. Directly next to it I noticed a familiar looking bulge where I knew Mr. Adult Tooth No. 2 would soon be making his break. My next check point were his current baby teeth. Not one was loose: check, check, check, and check. Lastly I deduced that Mr. Adult Tooth No. 1 needed much more room than losing the one corresponding baby tooth was going to give. I had a hunch what this entailed.

Luckily, Chase was very excited to go the dentist to get his tooth pulled, or teeth as I kept trying to tell him. "The more the merrier" was his happy, ignorant little thought. After one look the dentist proclaimed that they all needed to go and that an orthodontist appointment was foreseeable in the near future. Oh such fun.

I was trying to keep everything cool, you know, downplaying the whole process of the actual extracting of the teeth, the messy conclusion, and the final look, both for Chase and myself. I wanted to be honest with him, but really he didn't need to know ALL of the details. Meanwhile my heart was racing, my toes curled at the thought of what was about to take place, and I was bracing myself for the emotional and physical care he would need when it was all said and done.

He did wonderfully, truly. He didn't even flinch when his mouth was given drops of "Sleepy Juice." I was totally on board....that is until the tools came out for the nitty gritty work at which point my book became very interesting. Well, lets be honest, I couldn't begin to focus on the words but boy was I staring intently at the pages! At one point I noticed a lurch in my peripheral vision on the dentist's part, followed by a metallic clamping noise. Chase flinched a little and I, still staring at my page I'm embarrassed to admit, waited for him to cry out. The dentist just offered her apologies to Chase for "making a loud noise." I think her tool slipped as she was pulling up, but Chase was no worse for the wear. Thank heavens for Sleepy Juice.

At another time I heard a soft clank. Without moving my head from my book, I raised my eyes ever so slightly and saw a somewhat bloody tooth lying about 2 feet away from my feet. "I see it," the assistant reported to the dentist. Refusing to pick it up myself and not even wanting to think about how it got there (too late), I slowly lowered my eyes back to my book and pretended nothing happened.

Well, I made it, oh yeah and Chase did, too. Yes, the whole thing was somewhat traumatizing for the both of us. The bleeding and gauze changing was no fun either, but it's done and over with. He's pretty proud of how well he did, as he should be, and of his new toothless grin. He was especially excited when the Tooth Fairy landed him FIVE whole dollars. He was so thrilled in fact, that he got this brilliant idea to place his teeth back under his pillow tonight, and the next night, and the next, and so on and so forth. Now I see the wisdom of the Tooth Fairy in removing the teeth when leaving the money. I don't know why she forgot this time around, maybe because it would have been like removing a part of his SOUL after going through such an ordeal. He really wanted to hang onto those suckers.

Some before and after pictures for your viewing enjoyment: