This morning, while we were eating breakfast, Seth got this pained look on his face. Phil asked him what was wrong, and he replied that it hurt every time he took a bite. So, Phil told him to open his mouth, and it became evident that the reason it hurt was because he was losing his very first tooth!
And there was much rejoicing in our household, because Seth is 6 1/2 years old, and he was getting rather irritated that he had never lost a tooth. The rejoicing was followed by much swishing around of water and spitting...
Within a few minutes, Seth had yanked his tooth out! We took some pics, because we always take pics, and then we put the tooth aside for safe keeping. And that was that... or so we thought...
Except, it wasn't really... Seth couldn't seem to keep his mind off the lost tooth. Throughout the day, he would go check on it... and pick it up... and we kept reminding him to put it back so he wouldn't lose it.
But Seth didn't really want to put it back. So at some point... when neither Mom nor Dad was looking... He picked it up and took off with it.
Now... unbeknown to us, the tooth spent some time with Seth throughout the day. Seth read "Ranger Rick"... and so did the tooth. Seth beat up on his sister... and so did the tooth. Seth played Legos with his brother... and so did the tooth. It was a very busy tooth.
We sat down for dinner later than usual. We had pizza. It was not homemade pizza... but frozen pizza is good too... After dinner, we started to get the kids ready for bed, because, like I said, it was later than usual. And we went to get the tooth...
Except... the tooth wasn't there!
After Phil and I spent a few minutes going back and forth saying, "I didn't move the tooth, did you move the tooth?" and, "No, I didn't move the tooth, did you move the tooth?" we finally looked at Seth. And let me stop here to tell you that Seth is not a child who lies very often. I would like to say that it is because he is a very honest child, and perhaps that has something to do with it. However, the truth is, Seth just isn't a very good liar. He gets tears in his eyes and starts to look around the room, and he just gets caught. So, Seth doesn't really lie. Perhaps he should taken lessons from his sister... then again... maybe not...
At any rate, we asked Seth, "Did you take the tooth?" And the story began to unfold...
The story unfolded very slowly... as in it took a couple of hours slowly... But finally we narrowed down the time frame in which the tooth was lost. And... even more finally... we figured out that maybe it got stuck in one of the legos (duplos, actually). Caleb has a whole set of Thomas the Tank Engine duplos, and as it turns out, Seth gave the tooth a ride in Toby.
So Phil snuck into Caleb's room (Caleb was already sleeping, or he never would have let us play with his legos without him) and got the legos. And he dumped them all out. And we went through them one by one. In most normal households, this would not have been so time consuming, but we kind of have a lot of legos. But when we got to the last lego, there was still no tooth.
I think we were just about ready to give up, but there were a couple of serious issues here...
First, we are sort of sentimental. OK... we are really sentimental. It was disturbing to us that we didn't have the very first tooth that our first child had lost... and lost. We didn't really want to give up the hunt. Second, we were a little concerned about the fact that Caleb eats everything! It was a distinct possibility that he had eaten the tooth... or that he would if he was the first to find it. And third, Seth needed something to put under his pillow for the tooth fairy, and we didn't figure she'd take Grace and leave enough money...
Still, I was about to give up and tell him to go to bed. And then I looked down among all the other crumbs on the living room floor, and I thought... "Hey, that kinda looks like a tooth!" And so I pushed it with my toe, and it felt hard, so I stooped down to pick it up. And... sure enough... the tooth it was...
So I put it in a ziplock bag. And I told Seth that he'd better keep it there, because the tooth fairy was not going to leave any money if she couldn't find the tooth. And so help me, when I reach my hand under his pillow tonight, that tooth had better be in that bag!
Lisa
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