on the tooth fairy...

In the past two weeks we have become authorities on the whimsical little gal that flits and flies from house to house collecting the fallen teeth of children.

Authorities.

We have more knowledge, more education, more factual tooth fairy information than we could have ever hoped for.

The education, it all comes from our lovely 6 year old child who has at last count lost 2 teeth (though we expect wiggly tooth number three to come on down with in the next couple weeks as well... hell at the rate her teeth are going she'll be back on baby food in no time).

K knows things. She knows things about all kinds of things and she loves to tell you.

For instance, she is incredibly fond of pointing out that a tomato is in fact a fruit not a vegetable as the food industry would lead us to think. The platypus is a mammal despite the fact that it lays eggs. You should never drink salt water, even if you're really really realllllly thirsty.

These things are all true and she tells me these facts every day even though I'm the one that told her all of that in the first place. She also tells Dr. Normal. I'm pretty sure she's shared that information with my mom & dad, her aunt & uncle, missburrows and everyone else she's ever spoken to for more than 67 seconds...

But it was a great surprise to me the other day when she started naming off some lesser known pieces of information about the tooth fairy. She started thinking very hard about tooth fairy truths after one of her tooth fairy expectations was not met.

*Gasp*

One of her expectations of the tooth fairy wasn't met???? Surely not! How can this be?

"What happened that you thought was off?" I asked her.

"She took the envelope" K replied.

I know I should have nodded and smiled and walked it off... but I didn't. It engaged her, I may have even baited her a little thinking that my own tooth fairy knowledge was greater than hers. I am after all 31 years old have lost not only all of my baby teeth but my wisdom teeth as well...

"Of course she took the envelope" I said "you put the tooth in it silly, what did you expect her to do OPEN IT?"

"Yes. She was supposed to take my tooth out of the envelope and put it in her sack with all the other teeth... it makes it easier later"

She may have added a barely audible "Duh" on the end of that, but I like to think she doesn't think I'm so stupid that I deserve a "Duh" so I think we'll leave that out.

K then imparted to me the tale of the tooth fairy how she wanders far and wide collecting teeth from all over the world and placing them in her little bag of teeth. I can only suppose that it's a magical bag because in K's version of things the tooth fairy was not hauling a garbage sack full of pearly whites at the end of her long shift.

"Then" K said excitedly "When she gets back to her place she gets them all cleaned up so she can hand them down."

We were walking while we had this talk so I thought I had misheard her... Hand them down? Surely she didn't say hand them down...

"What?" I asked.

"She has to get them cleaned up so she can get them ready for the new babies mom."

Oh.My.Heck... in a pickle jar. Really? My kid just told me that baby teeth are hand me downs???

Really, she did she totally did. I nodded and smiled and told her how clever that was, I'd never thought of it before and in my book, that makes it clever. By the time we reached home she hadd her story completely justified. Proven. Ever wonder why some kids get cavities so quickly? It's because the kid that had them before them didn't brush enough. Or maybe they didn't floss. Or MAYBE their mom and dad let them have too much candy all the time and lots and lots of juice. Why are some kids born with teeth missing? Because some kid forgot to leave his tooth out for the fairy, or some girl accidentally swallowed her lost tooth in her mashed potatoes... on Thanksgiving... at her grandma's house...

Okay that was me, I swallowed my tooth in my mashed potatoes... but I was just a kid and it was an accident. Really!!! I didn't mean to do it. My big cousin even wrote the tooth fairy a touching note verifying that I did in fact lose a tooth and was not scamming her out of that shiny quarter (thanks Mie)...

My point being, my kid knows more than I do about fairies and what not and no matter what I may have thought in the past I'm totally going to defer to her knowledge in the future.

Before we go I want to leave a couple notes here.

For the kid who got my baby teeth: I'm sorry about all those maraschino cherries I ate after brushing my teeth, but they were really good.

For the kid that gets K's baby teeth: You're welcome... her baby teeth are perfect and full of whimsy, just like the rest of her.