Ick. Oh, and ICK. Did I mention ICK!?
When I picked up Stella at school today, she opened her hand to show me a tiny baby tooth. “Stella!” I cooed. “You lost a tooth today, sweetie?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. ”It’s not mine.”
I stopped in my tracks. ”What do you mean it’s not yours?”
“It’s Emmet’s.” (A boy in her kindergarten class.)
“Honey…did Emmet lose this today?”
“No. He lost it a long time ago. He lost TWO teeth,” she explained.
“So why do you have it?”
“I told him I needed it, so he gave it to me.”
Turns out Stella has been longing for her first visit from the Tooth Fairy for a looooong time, and will probably have to wait a long while yet, given how late her teeth arrived in the first place. My understanding is that late teethers lose their teeth on the late side, and Stella’s first tooth came in at around 14 months. So she struck a deal with her classmate, and planned to put the tooth under her pillow to fool the Tooth Fairy into coming early.
Funny how teeth from my own children are adorable, but a tooth from someone else’s child is…a tooth from someone else’s child. “Don’t you think the Tooth Fairy will know it’s not yours, honey?” I prodded. “Don’t you think she wants your tooth to be from YOU?”
“I bet she thinks a tooth’s a tooth,” Stella shrugged.
