Tooth Fairy Fun

It's no secret that Lucy has bad teeth. After this experience over a year and a half ago, we've been able to maintain what she's got fairly well. But at her last appointment she had for one small cavity and an infection under one of her crowns that would need to be pulled. Since is older now, we could fix these things in the office. I was worried about the extraction. It was a molar and I remember having baby teeth pulled with intact roots and it wasn't fun. Craig, who was the one back in the room with her while Jonah and I waited up front, said it was a bit rough on her and she cried but was very brave. I had stopped by redbox on the way to the dentist and gotten the new Cinderella for her and then she reminded me that when she has to have cavities filled she gets a milkshake (wow, what a memory!) and once she was settled in my bed with those things, she was happy enough again. She did think it was funny that I made the milkshake myself, I guess she thought I could only get them at Chik-fil-a.

But the biggest surprise of the whole event was that in all my worries about how she would be at the dentist, I completely forgot that this was the first tooth she would be "loosing" which meant - tooth fairy!

Now, we don't "do" Santa or the Easter Bunny around here so I guess it wasn't a given that we would do the tooth fairy. So there Craig and I were, staying up later than I would have preferred the night before to talk about how we would handle it. It wasn't a long or hard conversation, we agreed fairly quickly, it just struck me as funny because I definitely tend towards way overthinking this sort of thing.

We decided that just as we love all sorts of fairies and unicorns and make believe things around here, the tooth fairy wouldn't be any different. But I also wasn't going to lie. Every once in a while she asks me if unicorns are real (because, really, the idea that horses and zebras are real but unicorns aren't is a bit tricky) and I tell her, "No, not really real, but they are fun to pretend." So when I told her we needed to put the the tooth under her pillow and she asked if tooth fairies were "really really real?" I said the same thing. She looked at me for a second then ran off with an "okay" but then spent the rest of the day reminding me that we needed to put it under her pillow that night and telling me all her theories on where tooth fairies live,what they eat (flowers), how many their are and if they have wands and wings and whether their are boy fairies or not. And a few days later I was making something with a unicorn for her and she told me "I just love things that are magical and make-believe. Like unicorns. And the tooth fairy - even if it is just really you and daddy. I just love them all so much" So my truthfulness obviously did not spoil her fun.

And, in what was a very nice coincidence, a friend had recently shared with me the idea of fairy doors. At the time I wasn't even thinking about how Lucy was loosing a tooth the next week but once I made the connection, I knew it would be a lot of fun. I had to run out that afternoon of the dental work for a chiropractic appointment anyway so I stopped by Hobby Lobby to get some fairy door supplies. If I had been thinking ahead, I may have painted and put it together myself and just hung it that night the fairy arrived but I didn't have time for that. Instead I put the door and knob and paint in a baggie and placed it next to a note with her dollar saying that the fairy had a bit of trouble getting in this time so could Lucy make a fairy door with the supplies left so fairies could visit more easily.

The next day Lucy was so excited. We painted it together.

 If you want to do this, try and get a door without windows, that would be a lot easier. Hobby Lobby didn't have any so I worked with what I had and she let me do the tricky parts around the window. Then I gave it a coat of mod podge and Craig super glued the teeny tiny doorknob on.

A few command adhesive velcro strips and bam - fairy door! (And by bam I mean it took about a week in all, but just a few minutes at a time. Most of that was drying and mom procrastinating)

(And her mouth looks funny here not because of her teeth but because she's got a cough drop)

I think it's so cute! And using Hobby Lobby coupons and stuff I had on hand (mod podge, white paint and brushes), it only cost about $15.