What's the tooth fairy's going rate??

my children have aged me about 10 years in the mere 4 years they have been in my life. Yesterday didn't help.

I picked the boys up at school around 4 and as we were driving home Connor announced that he hurt his tooth while playing baseball that day. I didn't think too much of it, as the boy comes home with bruises, scrapes and general dirtiness every day. That's his job as a 4 year old boy. I asked if it hurt and how it happened. He told me it did hurt and that he dove for a ball and his tooth his the ground...? ok. He wasn't overly worried about it and played with bear in the backseat so I figured it would wait until we got home.

About 15 minutes later and I got out after pulling in the garage and looked at his mouth. I didn't see any bruising on his face or cuts to his tongue or gums fortunately. The tooth looked ok but was very loose. Not like hanging on by a thread loose, but wiggly loose. Ugh. I didn't think we'd have to deal with losing teeth, tooth fairy absurdity and this stuff for a while ;(

I called the boys dentist and started driving that way while I talked to the staff. Luckily they are just about 5 mintues away as they asked us to come in and do Xrays so they could make sure everything was ok. Our dentist is great to get us in at the very last minute before they closed for the day.

the boys at the dentist office. Noah looking less than concerned. Hopefully this isn't the last pic of Connor with both of his front teeth.

Waiting for the dentist to check him out

Connor did amazing during Xrays which I was dreading - lugging bear around so that he didn't pull cords, rip papers on walls and trying to comfort Connor during Xrays was something I dreaded the entire time in the waiting room. The last couple times at the dentist, he was a train wreck during Xrays so I was gleefully surprised that this time he was super chill. Maybe it's the buildup of knowing he has a pending appt that has wrecked him in the past and next time we'll just suddenly roll up to the appointment like a super fun surprise.

Also, I love that kids know precisely the bribery that awaits them at the end of their appointment. When I told Connor we were headed to the dentist after we left our house he immediately said, I'll get a sticker and a bouncy ball when I'm done. He can tell you that you get to pick something from the treasure chest after Noah's ear appointment (ENT) and that you get a sticker at normal doctor appointments unless you get shots, because in that case you get a sticker AND something from the toy box. It's hilarious to me the things that kids remember.

We'd been told at his last appointment that Connor's roots in his two front teeth had already been dissolving. Likely from an injury to his mouth. Since we didn't remember any sort of injury to his mouth, the dentist told us that it could have been several little incidents and that can be enough to get the cause the roots to start to dissolve. At that point, they'd told us that he'd likely loose his baby teeth before the new ones started to come in. Because of that, his fall yesterday didn't necessarily have to be too hard to cause the tooth to loosen up. :( The dentist showed us the Xray and you can see his big boy teeth up above the little ones which was pretty cool. You could also see the injured tooth had lots of space around it near the gumline. She told us that sometimes the gum can tighten up around the tooth but in Connor's case it's unlikely. The dentist guessed that the tooth would make its great escape within the month.

If I'm being honest, I'm crushed for vanity reasons. The dentist told us that big teeth typically come in around 7 or 8 and so that means we'll have 3-4 years of a missing front tooth. While the pics I see of other kids missing a front tooth are cute enough, I'm not thrilled with this for MY kid. Oh well though. We're begging Connor to leave the tooth alone and not mess with it. He swears it doesn't hurt but who knows. We're just going to have to be a bit careful about what he eats (no apples, no chewy candy, etc) to try and keep the tooth in there for as long as possible but its just a waiting game at this point. It's days are numbered, clearly. We haven't mentioned the Tooth Fairy yet and I'm not sure why. Maybe because I don't want him trying to get the tooth out to get a few bucks. Maybe we can tell him about the Tooth Fairy but leave out the cash money part...at least until it's determined how much money she's passing out currently.