Okay, have I ever told you guys how five year old boys are about my favorite thing in the world? It's true, and I am lucky enough to have had three of them. At any rate, I am halfway through raising my third five year old boy, at least. And, Truman, well, he is just about the funnest of the fun five year old boys I've ever met. He is also my most rambunctious, loud, and vivacious five year old I've had in this house. And I love him for all his energy.
Leave it to Truman to be my first child to knock a tooth out. I've been a mom for 17 years, and have seven kids, and up until a couple days ago, there have been no unloose teeth knocked out before they were ready in this family. Broken bones, yes. Stitches, certainly. Sprains, bruises and black eyes a-plenty. But it took Truman running through the house, tripping over a footstool and hitting the corner of the kitchen table to knock out a tooth. Poor guy. The tooth was not loose at all (in general my kids are, like, tweens before they even get a loose tooth). The tooth ripped through the gum and came out whole, root and all. Had that happened to me, I'm sure I would have been recovering for a whole 48 hours before thinking about interacting with the outside world. Truman definitely cried quite a bit initially, but when he heard his tooth came out it perked him up considerably, even under such painful circumstances. Another 30 minutes (and a phone call to the dentist, who assured me it wasn't an immediate dental emergency that needed to be dealt with that evening) later, and Truman was telling me, "I wish that had happened, but that it didn't hurt when my tooth came out."
The dentist said to give him popsicles for the swelling, and Truman helped himself to no less than four that evening. I'm not sure the popsicles ended up being strictly necessary, since every time I checked in on him, he and his siblings and friends were playing together, stopping now and then to watch Truman get yet another popsicle, and Truman calling to me over his shoulder, "My tooth feels great, Mom!"
First thing the next morning I asked, "How are you feeling, Truman?", hoping that the worst of the recovery was over.
"Awesome!" Truman replied, as the memory of being a big boy who now had the prestige of having lost a tooth before his older, seven year old brother, returned to him.
It occurred to me later on that day that the Tooth Fairy should probably pay Truman a visit. One thing you should know in this house is that our tooth fairy is pretty unreliable. She is usually days late, if she comes at all. However, when she comes she does usually leave a decent amount of cash under the pillow, but you really can't much count on her. Her memory and the cash she happens to have on hand at any given moment fluctuates greatly. Add this to the fact that my kids are usually close to age ten before they lose a first tooth, and somehow I've never been able to convince them that the tooth fairy is real. If you can you imagine.
Well, the following morning, I told Truman to check under his pillow to see if the tooth fairy left him some money.
"The tooth fairy? What's a tooth fairy?" with a great deal of skepticism in his voice. Oh dear, she really has been absent-minded as of late if Truman doesn't even know what I'm talking about.
"The tooth fairy buys your tooth back and leaves money under your pillow!" Gideon told Truman, as he excitedly realized the tooth fairy might have really left something under Truman's pillow, for once. "Come on, let's go check!"
And sure enough, out came Truman from the bedroom, clutching a dollar bill tightly and very proudly. Even my slightly older-but-still-not-too-old skeptical children began to have second thoughts about who actually was the tooth fairy.
"Mom, Jude said the Tooth Fairy might be mom and dad, but I told him it couldn't be, because the tooth fairy gives lots of money, and you said we don't have any money!"
"Truman, you are so smart and that is some great logic!" I smilingly left it at that. If his interpretation of "money is tight right now" allowed him to believe there was a tooth fairy, so be it, right? How sweet, my kid actually believes in the tooth fairy!
"Mom, my friend Jack told me the tooth fairy might be Tinkerbell."
"Oh yeah?"
"Can we please find a video?"
"A video of what?"
"A video of the tooth fairy!"
One of Jude's and Truman's favorite activities is to look at Youtube videos of whatever animal or plant they happen to be interested at that time, usually on an iPhone. Hey, homeschooling credit, right? You never stop learning. A few nights ago it was videos of Great Horned Owls that they wanted to see. Today, naturally, why not videos of the Tooth Fairy?
I started to pull up images of the tooth fairy on the computer, curious what Google would have to show me.
Seeing they were images, not videos, he instructed me: "No, Mom, not like that, you have to do it on your phone!"
"Actually, Truman, the computer will work just as well as mommy's phone. Watch, I found a video!"
What do you know, someone captured the tooth fairy on video and uploaded it to Youtube! A little five year old boy like Truman lost a tooth, placed under his pillow, and set up cameras in his room to get video footage. Then he shared his footage with the world wide web for all little boys and girls to see. Smart kid. And, wow, she really does look quite a bit like Tinkerbell!
"But, Truman, you'll have to tell Jack that, at least in this video, she doesn't wear a green dress."
