Loose Tooth

My oldest boy, he’s tall and lanky. He outgrows most of his clothes in the blink of an eye. His soft-scented newborn days seem so distant, ancient, yet just like yesterday. He likes video games and playing with toy guns and he pretends he’s a soldier battling zombies. Even though I’ve been in denial, it’s safe to say that he’s not a baby anymore. To further cement that fact, he has his first loose tooth.

It was noticed during his bath last night. A very slight wiggle. The few times we discussed it wasn’t enough preparation apparently. “My baby teeth will fall out and then I’ll get big boy teeth!”, he’d say excitedly. When the time came, however, he had a mini-meltdown. He wouldn’t let us see it. He didn’t want to talk about it. He even cried. Big, fat rolling tears down his cheeks.

“He doesn’t want you to know he’s growing up”, J confided.

I remember feeling incredibly nervous bringing him home from the hospital. I didn’t know what to do with a baby. There’s a lot of things I regret about those first few months: I set him in his swing too often, I gave up breastfeeding too soon, my moods wouldn’t settle, my head was unsure, I doubted more than I believed. Through it all, he made me a mother. We fought through the trenches and came out hand in hand. And now my once fragile little boy, with a mess of curly hair and sea of blue eyes, is on the verge of a giant leap into growing up.

After he finally calmed down later that night, he urged optimistically, “Maybe it’ll fall out tomorrow!” It’s not going to be that soon, but it seems to be time I craft together some Tooth Fairy wings.

What is the going rate for a tooth these days?