Lost a Tooth!

Now, while a picture IS worth a thousand words, I feel that I need to describe my tough-as-nails little boy, determined to lose his first tooth. I have had a slight delay in posting the pictures, because he wanted the experience to be a surprise for Daddy, and the losing of the tooth occured last Thursday night. The tooth started becoming earlier in the week - we noticed the permanent tooth coming in the weekend prior. Yup. You read all of that correctly, as in weekend before last.

So, on to the story. On Wednesday night he asked for some string to tie around his tooth so that he could put the string on a doorknob and slam the door shut to try and get the tooth out. I said, "No." Instead, I suggested that he simply wiggle his tooth using his fingers. So he did.

On Thursday night he again asked for some string. So I relented and gave him special tooth string, AKA dental floss. He asked me to help him wrap it around the tooth so he could pull. I did. He kept pulling up, and the string kept sliding off of the tooth. I reminded him that if he continued to pull up, that the string was going to keep sliding off of the tooth. He had an epiphany, and asked me to put the string UNDER the sides of the tooth, so that he could pull down and pop the tooth out. I did, and he started pulling down in a very determined, controlled fashion.

Sure enough, he popped that tooth right outta' his mouth!

The look of amazement on his face, then horror as he realized he was bleeding was priceless. Had I actually thought he was going to go through with it I would have been capturing the experience on video, but I really thought the pain would be too much for him! Silly mom, he sure proved me wrong!

We cleaned up the gums, rinsed his mouth out repeatedly, cleaned the tooth, then discussed the tooth fairy. He let me know that the tooth fairy brought small toys in exchange for teeth. Who knew? I told him that I thought he had to stay in bed so that the tooth fairy could use her fairy vision to double check that the tooth under the pillow matched the hole in his mouth.

At any rate, Kellen has lost his first tooth, and he did it in a Herculean way! Way to go, Kellen!