Cut Your Teeth and Make Your Peace

Lana lost her first tooth last week.

She was incredibly pleased about it.

It fell out while she was wiggling it in front of the bathroom mirror.

David and I were sitting out by the pool at the time. (This is pretty much where we can be found most of the summer. We have a strict rule about no kids in the backyard when there are no grown-ups out, by the reverse is not true. In fact, some times the adults in our house enjoy the pool when there are no kids in it. Blasphemy, I know.)

Anyway, David and I were sitting by the pool. Lana came bursting out the back door and triumphantly produced her tiny tooth, exclaiming, "MY TOOTH FELL OUT!! MY TOOTH FELL OUT!!"

We made all the appropriate parental noises and I took the tooth inside and put it in a sandwich baggie.

WHICH I then promptly lost. Seriously.

I put it somewhere safe. And I can tell you, it SURE IS safe, because I cannot, for the life of me, tell you where it is.

As bedtime drew near, I became increasingly distressed about the fact that I had misplaced her tooth.

Lana became increasingly distressed about the fact that A FLYING MAGICAL CREATURE WAS COMING TO HER BEDROOM TO TERRORIZE HER IN HER SLEEP.

She was totally freaked out about the tooth fairy. Scared out of her mind, in fact.

She asked David to put the tooth under HIS pillow. (We readily agreed to this, since the tooth was, and is, still LOST.)

She asked us to leave the tooth fairy a note. She specified that we should not say who in the household had lost a tooth.

"Don't say it's Lana's tooth!" she begged and pleaded.

We wrote a note to the tooth fairy, conspicuously removing any reference as to whose mouth it might have come from, and we put Lana to bed.

She was awake every half hour from 10:00 to 12:30, worrying that something was flying around her bedroom, at which point I gave up and took her to sleep in the guest room with me.

She slathered her small body next to mine, under my arm, and that's the way she slept all night. (Usually, when we need to bring her to bed with us, she is just satisfied to be in the bed. But not that night. That night, fear of the tooth fairy required actual parental contact all night long. The horror of that tiny little fairy. Who knew?)

In the morning, David hung a $2 on Lana's bedroom door while Lana was still asleep.

The $2.00 bill had been in the drawer of my jewelry box, where a bottle of my perfume once spilled out a bit, and now everything that spends any time there smells faintly of Yves St. Laurent's Paris.

When she woke up, Lana pulled the bill off her door.

She eyed it suspiciously. "Who put this here?" she demanded.

"The tooth fairy," David said.

Lana brought the bill to her nose and breathed deeply.

Her eyes narrowed. She sniffed the bill again.

"This money," she announced, (in a tone much like that of Sherlock Holmes solving some kind of mystery), "SMELLS LIKE MOMMY!"

She ran to show Gabriel the bill.

"Smell this!" she commanded.

Gabe said, "The tooth fairy always brings two dollars."

"Smell this money, Gabe!" Lana said again.

Gabe smelled it.

"That money smells like mommy," Lana said. "Don't you think that money smells like mommy? It smells like mommy's smell!"

Gabe considers for a minute and said, "That money DOES smell like mommy."

I tried to tell them that the tooth fairy made the money smell like mommy because she didn't want Lana to be afraid of her.

They both pretended to accept that explanation. But truthfully...I think they might be on to me...I can't believe I've been outed by a fear of small flying magical money bringing fairies and a devotion to Yves St. Laurent...

*Make Your Peace, INXS