Ok, here’s a legitimate parenting question. When your kid finds a tiny box full of her baby teeth because you sent her upstairs to your jewelry box to look for a pearl earrings for her granny costume, what do you do?

Also, what state of parenthood sentimentality possessed me to save those baby teeth in the first place? I sure don’t possess it anymore, given I completely forgot I had that tiny box containing tiny chompers until my second born reminded me with a very concerned look on her face.

When I tell you that I took a moment to collect myself in the middle of cooking supper and packing for a five day trip away from the ranch…and a work phone call and my husband deep into painting the ceiling of the new addition and collecting  items for Rosie’s 100^th day of school costume…I mean I sat there on the floor of my room staring into that box for a good five minutes while my daughter asked all the questions.

Five minutes seems like a week when the truth will pop the Fairy Tale Tooth Fairy myth right in the middle of the part of childhood where the kid with questions is losing all her teeth.

First the Elf on the Shelf and now this?! Where was this in the parenting book?!

And then I remembered that when I was a weird little kid losing teeth I wrote a letter to The Fairy asking her if I could keep my tooth and still collect on the money. And so with that realization I did what any panicked and frazzled mother would do and I lied. I told her those teeth were not her teeth. They were mine. From when I was a little kid. Because I wrote a note. Because I wanted to keep my teeth for reasons I could not explain.

“But you didn’t live in this house when you were a kid!” Rose replied.

And so I said I’ve traveled with them. My baby teeth meant that much that I’ve brought them into adulthood with me.

My six-year-old daughter looked at me like I was a crazy person, which I deserved. Because I am, clearly. And then she said, “Well that makes sense. I counted the teeth and there aren’t eight. I’ve lost eight teeth, so they can’t be mine.”

And then, over a dinner of leftover pizza, Rosie made sure to inform her dad and her big sister that “Mom saved her baby teeth.”

“Gross,” yelled Edie.

My husband didn’t even flinch. Nothing phases him at this point. But Oh Lord. What have I done?

Traumatized her is what my sister decided.

“She’s going to be haunted by that for the rest of her life,” she texted after I confessed to her immediately via text the way I do all my parenting mishaps.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Like, who invented the Tooth Fairy and how did the whole nation of parents from across the generations just jump on board with the concept? Like, yeah, that seems reasonable. Money for teeth. Sounds fun.

It surely always goes wrong as much as it goes right for parents, especially the ones who are on the struggle bus with me. Like last time Rosie lost a tooth, I asked Chad, who puts her to bed every night, to handle the switch. And then when I woke up at 5 am thinking surely he fell asleep too soon and forgot, I walked downstairs and slipped five dollars under her pillow and the next morning Rosie woke up to sixteen dollars and fifty cents. Which really angered my sister. Because, well, that’s a pretty steep precedent to set in the neighborhood.  

Help.