Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Growing Up

I had to look at the timestamp to find out today's date. Oh! It's June nineteenth. Already? Wow. So, today I came home to a tumbleweed in my driveway. I live in town.

This is the first week of summer camp. I had trepidation about leaving OC the first day, yesterday, because I called last week for directions and no one called me back. Hello? What is that?? When I got there yesterday morning the woman apologized and said someone should have really called back, she doesn't know how it happened, blah blah blah. All I could think was, I'm leaving my child in your care, please tell me this isn't a sign of neglect. Tell me it was that last week, the counselors were so busy watching every kid like a hawk that you couldn't answer the message-only line where I left my message, and that the live line you were tending to like it was Bambi after his mother was shot. Still, I went to see OC at lunchtime - just to be sure she was feeling okay - and she was fine. No, she was not fine, she was great! She was having a blast with her new friends and then she had to deal with her mother horning in on her camp time. *draws square in air with fingers

When I picked her up that evening she was a dirty, happy kid. And hungry. I had brought an apple with me because I knew she'd be hungry but also because I knew it would work on loosening her second loose tooth even more. It worked like a charm, because that tooth came out when we got home. It's a good thing, too, since both the adult teeth had already shot through the gums and were ready to replace them. The roots are still down there from both her lost teeth, and the dentist said they'd come out in pieces. Yick.

She was SO EXCITED about it that she told her dad about it IN CAPITAL LETTERS. She was a little ooged out by the tiny amount of blood, but got over it quickly at the thought of the tooth fairy's impending, dough-laden visit.

How is it possible to want to see your kid grow up and then, when they do, you just want to cry and make them stop?



It turns out the tooth fairy gives generously for the first tooth, then scales back for the second.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes, the tooth fairy only has a 5 in her purse! And the tooth fairy's husband has nothing but a receipt in his wallet! And after much searching of cars (and drawers) and after deciding that going to the ATM for a 20, then getting change for that 20 is a little excessive at 11pm on a school night, the only thing to give the kid is a 5! Which gives the kid high expectations and a little disappointment after the next tooth is lost and the inevitable scaling back happens.

It also makes the tooth fairy keep a stash of one dollar bills in her nightstand.

Not that I would know anything about this, of course.

ps: she is such a cutie-pie! :)

Kristen said...

gone are the good old days of a quarter, huh?