The First Tooth

Almost on the eve of kindergarten, Kai lost his first tooth: left central incisor on the bottom. It was the first tooth he ever cut, on December 30th, 2007 and the first one to go, on August 30, 2012 (his Uncle Meeko's 40th birthday nonetheless!). Yes, I really do have that info recorded in his baby book. My data keeping has slipped over the years and Teia's tooth chart has dates on it that say something like "cut this one sometime in the spring...." Poor second baby.

This afternoon I went outside to call Kai in to get ready for gymnastics and he called over to me "Mommy, my tooth fell out!" At first I didn't believe him. It isn't time for that already is it? I walked over to check and sure enough, there was a tidy little hole where his perfect little baby tooth used to be. Wow. For some reason I was clearly blown away by this little milestone. Maybe b/c it was so unexpected, especially amid all the Kindergarten hubbub and hype.

Then he looked at me earnestly and asked "How old am I now?" It might seem an odd question but you see the universe helped me out here in preparing our little man for what might have been rather traumatic. I had not given any thought to letting him know that one by one his pearly whites were going to dislodge themselves from his mouth. Mostly b/c I still assumed he was way too young. Last week at gymnastics a little girl was proudly showing off the gaping hole in her mouth where she lost one of her front teeth. Kai was very interested so I quickly explained to him that she was 6 and that when he was 6 he'd start to loose his teeth too. Hence, the question. Kai has been excited to turn 6 since about the day after he turned 5. So I had to backpedal and explain that even 5 year olds could lose teeth too!

The next order of business was to find the little tooth which Kai wasn't sure if he had swallowed. Amazingly enough I spotted the tiny little thing in the grass and picked it up. Yes! He'd have something for the tooth fairy and I'd have his first tooth. He carefully laid it under his pillow and we headed to gymnastics with Kai enthusiastically exploring the new little hole in his mouth.

We saw the same little girl who had lost her tooth and showed her Kai's one-tooth-less smile. Her response, "Awesome!" Kids can be so great. She wanted all the gory details so she asked Kai "did you pull it out or did it fall out?" Kai replied, "it wiggled out."

The tooth fairy decided to come early to our house, while Kai was at gymnastics. Knowing our little lad, he would lie awake most of the night waiting for that tooth fairy so we decided to spare him some of the suspense. He came home to find a 5-spot under his pillow. He was quite excited and stuffed it into his piggy bank. I heard $5 is the going rate for first teeth but that the rate goes down as the tooth count goes up. I don't think Kai minded how much it was, he was just pretty excited about this hard evidence that he really is growing up. All of a sudden he does look much older....just in time for kindergarten.