Friday, April 29, 2011

Missing Teeth

The sitter texted me Monday morning saying Simon had a loose tooth and he was working on it.  I told her to tell him that he was too little for that!
 
When I picked him up it was all wiggly, a lot for only one day of being loose I thought.

At bedtime he was still working on it, but he still had it.  I kissed him goodnight and he said to me, "Will it hurt?"
"What, when you pull it?"
"Yeah."
"Only for a quick second, not like getting a shot, or breaking your finger, or anything like that."
He just nodded.  I turned out the light and went to the big boys room to kiss them goodnight.  After I kissed Noah I was rounding the corner around Eli's bed when Simon came bounding in, with a big grin on his face, "Here it is!"  He smiled big and held out his hand. 

Sure enough, he had pulled it out.  We set to work looking at it and determining where to put it so the tooth fairy would get it.  It ended up in a small container on his nightstand.  Lights back off and everyone into bed.

About an hour later I was downstairs folding clothes when I heard footsteps coming down the hall.  Simon.  He put his head down on me and said, "I'm just thinking of bad things, I can't go to sleep."
I said what I always say to him when he says that, "Well, think about something fun, like LEGOs."
"I'm just thinking about the tooth fairy.  I don't want her to take my tooth.  I want to keep it."
"You want to keep your tooth?"
"Yeah."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I don't know."
"Fine, the tooth fairy won't take your tooth, I'll be sure she gets the message.  Now go back to bed and dream about LEGOs."
"Okay!" as he ran off happy.

On Wednesday the sitter texted me saying Simon was trying to get the other one on the bottom to be loose.  She said she was encouraging him to leave it alone because it didn't seem that loose, that it would loosen up on his own.  When I picked him up I was teasing and asked her if Simon lost another tooth today.  She laughed and said no, but that he had worked on it and it was getting wiggly.

At dinner Eli asked Simon if he could see his new tooth and Simon didn't really let him, so I said, "Simon Eli didn't get to really see it, why don't you show him?"

Simon seemed uncomfortable, but opened his mouth to let Eli look.  He had his tongue in the hole though and Eli couldn't really see so Eli and I both said he needed to move his tongue.  Reluctantly he did.  It looked like an enormous gap.  Like both of his front teeth were missing.  Simon quickly shut his mouth.  I looked at Tim and he looked at me and I said, "It looked like they were both gone didn't it?"  Tim's eyes were full of concern when he said, "Yeah," then to Simon he said, "Open your mouth."

Sure enough they were both gone.  We all stared for a second in disbelief.  Then I said, "Did you lose it at Natalie's today?"

He just nodded his head.  I pulled out my phone and called her, but just left a message.  Eli asked him where the tooth was.  Simon told him it was in a little case that he had taken some legos in to play with at the sitters.  Eli got it and found the tooth laying at the bottom.

The sitter called me back a minute later and she said that she didn't know anything about him pulling his tooth, she did say she was reading to the little boys while Simon was watching his favorite show and he had a guilty look on his face, but that she didn't investigate.  She's thinking that maybe that's when he did it.

Upon further interrogation, I asked, "Why did you pull your tooth out?"
He responded, "I didn't."
"What do you mean you didn't, it didn't just fall out!"
He put his head down and said, "It came out when I was using my teeth to get some legos apart."
Ohhhh.
"Is that why you didn't want to tell us?  Because you know you're not supposed to use teeth to get legos apart?"
His head still down, he nodded in agreement.
"Oh Simon, that's why we have rules, to keep you safe.  Luckily that was a baby tooth and was going to come out sometime anyway, but what if it wasn't?  You can NOT use your teeth on legos. Do you understand?"
His teary eyes looked at me and he nodded in agreement again.

The boys all learned a little lesson about using teeth for things other than chewing, and I think that's a good thing!  Simon was very remorseful and a little later came up to me, with his head down and said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth right away about my tooth."  I hugged his sweet self and said, "We're all learning Simon, and hopfully today you learned to just tell me right away.  I just want to keep you safe.  I love you so much!"
"I love you too Mom!"
"Okay, now let's take a picture of those holes in your mouth!"
Oh, and I ordered some "brick seperators" from LEGO, we're not doing this again!

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