The Loose Tooth Becomes The Lost Tooth

Almost every night when I go to turn off the light in the boys room after they've fallen asleep, I look at them longingly and then come in and tell Steve that they have to stay exactly like they are now and they are not allowed to grow up any further. He rolls his eyes and smiles at me, but I know he feels the same way.
Well, for all my wishing, they are growing up anyway, and I was reminded of this yet again when Max came home a couple of weeks ago saying one of his teeth were loose. I couldn't believe it so I checked it out for myself, and indeed the thing was wiggling.
Ever since Max has been wiggling and wiggling his tooth and showing it to everyone who would look. The other night I looked at him and it was almost horizontal in his mouth. Check it out:

I decided then and there it was time to apply the old dental floss tooth removal method used by my, and probably every other, Mom. Here's how it went:

First Steve tried but his fingers were a little too big to get the floss in a loop and around that tiny, baby tooth. I tried my hand at it, but the floss kept slipping off. Max was getting frustrated because he was way too excited to get this tooth out and experience this major rite of passage.

Finally I got it around and told Max that it might hurt a little bit. I tugged, the tooth came out, and I asked Max if he was okay, and he pouted a little bit because he thought I had once again let the floss slip off, but when I told him it was actually out, he was overjoyed. So overjoyed, in fact, he had to call both sets of Grandparents to tell them.

One of the reasons Max has been so excited about losing his first tooth is because of the little tooth holder we bought for him on our trip to Belgium in October. It says "Milch Zahne" or "Milk Tooth" on the box and it is really for saving baby teeth (good thing Mirjam could translate and explain this all to us), but we decided to use it as a place to leave the tooth for the tooth fairy.

It was almost killing Jack to not have any of the attention, but he found his way into the action.

I went right to my wallet to see how much money Max would be getting from the Tooth Fairy, and found I only had a $10 bill. Well, long story short, Max got $10 for his first tooth because we were to lazy to go out and break it, but we told him that you get a lot more for your first tooth than for the others, and he seemed to buy it. He was also very generous with his Tooth Fairy profits, and went directly to Toys R Us to buy some new Bakugans, but bought Jack a Hot Wheels car too and then saved the last two bucks and change in his bank. At least he's not getting to greedy in his old age.

And I'm just hoping I don't get sick from having my hands in his strep infested mouth. Fingers crossed.