Tooth Fairy Fail

Back when M was little Terence and I had some differing opinions about the fun traditionally secret roles of parents.  In the end we decided to take on Santa and the Tooth Fairy but skip playing the Easter Bunny.  I've been a pretty good Santa (all of my kids though now getting older still believe), but I'm a really pathetic tooth fairy.

Back when M started losing teeth I blew it with about her second tooth, forgetting to come in at all that night.  I made some excuse about how the tooth fairy must have been extra busy that night, and if M would just try it again some other night I was sure the tooth fairy would make it to her.  But eventually my eternal forgetting got to be too much.  One time, after forgetting the tooth/money exchange for the third night in a row, I called M into my room and explained that I was really the tooth fairy, but not to tell the other kids.  She wasn't bothered or disillusioned at all; in fact, she seemed delighted to be let in on the secret.  She's been diligent about making sure the other kids don't suspect that Mom is really the one taking the teeth from under their pillows.

I haven't had too much trouble with J-- probably because the boy usually misplaces the lost tooth before it can ever make its way under his pillow.  (J also tends to go to sleep before I do, unlike the girls, so I can slip in and make the exchange before I go to bed.)

But with B, I blew it from the very beginning.  With the very first tooth she lost, I didn't remember the first night.  Then the second night she didn't go to bed until the wee hours of the morning and there was no way I was staying up for that just to play the tooth fairy.  But when I went to take the tooth in the morning (usually that girl is nearly impossible to wake up at a reasonable hour so I was sure she would sleep through it) she must have woke up a little because I later heard her insisting to M that Mommy must be the tooth fairy.  M, bless her heart, argued vehemently that B must have been mistaken because Mommy is most definitely NOT the tooth fairy.

Well, B just recently lost both her front top teeth and M was worried about me doing my job right.  When I got up the other morning I found a post-it note stuck to my door that read "Get BJ's tooth" on it.  Hee hee!  It was just too funny.  But when the second tooth came out two days ago, I forgot again.  M got on my case and told me that she wasn't going to put a post-it note up for me again, but she brought me the post-its so I could make my own reminder.

Silly girl.  I still forgot.  So I threw in the towel and when B asked me point blank if I was the tooth fairy I told her yes.  This morning when we were getting ready for family prayers B wanted to know what I do with all the teeth.  At that point M piped up and declared, "Mommy doesn't do ANYTHING with teeth, remember?" and she pointed at J, who was blithely ignoring the whole conversation.  So I guess now I'm going to have two co-conspirators.  Maybe I can delegate the tooth retrieval job to B since she's up later than anyone else and M can leave her post-it notes to remind her . . . they can't do worse at it than I have!