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I’ll get the string and pliers

The last couple of years Christmas in the Bright household has come to mean tears and hysteria over loose teeth and pending visits from the Tooth Fairy.  If you’ll remember last year, The Idiot dog knocked out one of Sassy’s front teeth the week of Christmas and then The Bandit knocked out the other on Christmas Eve.   That was also the same evening my brand new Blackberry went for a swim in bloody bathwater. 

Everyone recovered.  Sassy grew in new teeth – although they are crooked and widely spaced so I’m hoping when she’s twelve, Santa Claus brings braces.  She’s also lost several more over the year.  For the last several days, she’s had a very loose bottom tooth.  She has moaned and whined and groaned and cried and starved herself because “I can’t eaaaaaaat with my toooooooooth!” 

I’m sorry to say, I’m not a very good commisserator.  “Just pull it out!”

This drool is nothing. Really.

“NOOOOOOO!” Then, as God as my witness, a string of drool will come from her mouth to rival one from my old Newfoundland, Sophie. 

I’ve told her repeatedly the more hysterical she makes herself, the more it’s going to hurt but she can’t listen to my sage advice because she’s hyperventilating.  I pity her husband some day in the delivery room with her. 

About 100 times a day she drags me into the bathroom  to hold her hand while she fusses about and pretends that she’s gonna pull it out, but in the end, she chickens out.  Every.  Single.  Time.  For days and days.

This morning her tooth was so tender she couldn’t eat yogurt because there were blueberries in there. 

“Honey, there is nothing softer on the planet than yogurt.  I don’t know what to tell you.  I guess you’ll just starve to death.”  I know I’m not going to win any Mommy of the year awards, but a person can only put up with so much self-created drama.

Right now, as Kurt is reading this, he’s falling over laughing because, once upon a time, I was the Queen of Self-Created Drama.  Now, however, I’m the Mom and FOR GOD’S SAKE JUST PULL IT OUT ALREADY!

Finally at dinner tonight I could take it no more.  The crocodile tears and dragons’ breath eminating  from my child due to several days of poorly brushed teeth pushed me over the edge. 

We went to the bathroom: her to pull out her tooth, me to be a cheerleader.

“Ready?  On three.  One…..two….”

“No! I can’t. I can’t,” she sobs.

“Yes you can.” I squeeze her hand for moral support.  “Just grab a hold of it and give it a little twist.”

“OoooooKaaaaay,” she stutters, drool hanging from her quivering bottom lip.

“Alright, one….two…..”

“NO!  It’s goooooooona huuuuuuuurt,” she tells me.

” You have to breathe, Sassy,” I say.  “And it’s only going to hurt for a minute.”

“A MINUTE!?” she asks, complete and total panic written across her face. 

“A second,” I backpedal quickly, “Only a second.  Baby, it’s holding on by a thread, a tiny little piece of skin.”

Now she’s standing on the toilet so she can peer at it in the mirror over the sink.  “But it’s gonna bleed,” she tells me.

“Not much.”  OH COME ON.  “Do you want me to do it?”

Now she glares at me like I’m a monster.  “NO!” Toothena

“Alright then, grab hold of it and pull on three.  One…..two….”

This goes on for about fifteen minutes.  The whole while my dinner is getting cold.  Finally a tiny bit of porcelain smaller than a Chicklet is plucked from her mouth.  There is no blood.  No pain.  The drama has ended and the Tooth Fairy has come and gone.

I can’t wait to do this with The Bandit.

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