Lots of children lose their first tooth when they are in kindergarten - some even earlier - but we have a pretty extensive history in our family of losing teeth very late. So I was actually surprised when I confirmed that Elise did, in fact, have a loose tooth at the age of 6 right before the start of first grade. The loose tooth was the focus of much conversation for weeks - she fiddled with it constantly and it got to the point that she asked me to pull it out so that she could eat normally again.I have a fairly weak stomach and thus things like loose teeth make me queasy. I put on a brave face one evening and did actually attempt to pull it (after lots of begging) - to no avail thank goodness because the whole thing completely grossed me out and I never attempted to pull it again.
When I picked Elise up at school a few weeks into first grade she excitedly ran over and gave me her biggest, toothless
smile. She'd lost it that day at lunch! It was exciting, of course, to talk about the tooth fairy and look at the tooth and look at the gaping hole in her mouth. We called grandparents and took pictures and made a huge to-do about it. But the whole thing actually also made me surprisingly sad. I am not usually overly sentimental about stuff like this but I really took this one hard. A piece of my daughter's childhood was literally shedding itself in front of me. She is growing up, whether I like it or not and while she'll always be my baby, she is definitely no baby anymore.
Elise was thrilled that she had her first visit from the tooth fairy, who very diplomatically left her a dollar, a quarter, a dime, a nickle and a penny. And just days later we discovered loose tooth number 2.
I guess this literally shedding of childhood will be on-going and take many years, so I am going to have to buck up on this one!
1 comment:
She really is starting to look like such a big girl!!!
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