A Real Kindergartener

Several weeks ago when I arrived at my mom’s to pick up the girls, Olivia ran to show me something. Her top right front tooth was loose. Very loose. I don’t know what she was eating but something had helped it along in its looseness.

But it was weirdly loose. It wouldn’t go backward, it only went forward. She was cute in a Nanny McPhee way. I could actually feel the start of her permanent tooth behind that loose baby tooth but it was still pretty tightly attached.

Her tooth stayed that way for over two weeks. She learned to eat by taking bites with the left side of her mouth. She wiggled it occasionally but resolutely refused to let anyone entertain the idea of helping that tooth come out.

The four of us went to the lake this past Sunday sort of as a final farewell to summer. The weather was beautiful, the lake was actually still warmish and Tom brought along a little floating thing that the girls could climb on and jump off of into the water (feet first, obviously.)

At one point, Olivia called to me. She smiled at me and showed me that her loose tooth was bleeding. She’d hit the raft with her mouth and further loosened the tooth. But she still wouldn’t let me reach in and just yank the thing out.

We decided it was time to leave the water and have a snack, hoping said snack would prompt Olivia’s tooth to give up that last thread and come out.

Nope, not happening. We hit up the park by the lake and swam again but still, that tooth held on for dear life.

After the lake, Tom needed to make a stop to pick up some light bulbs and canning lids. Yes, I’m very lucky to have him.

When we walked into Walmart, Tom got ahead of us and A and O and I made our way after him. I was a little ahead of the girls when Olivia gasped and then raced toward me. She showed me her mouth and…the tooth was gone.

I asked her when she lost it.

She replied, “When Lyssie hit me in the mouth.”

Alyssa shrugged. “I didn’t mean to.”

Olivia declared, “She didn’t hurt me but she did know my tooth out.”

And where was the culprit? Nowhere to be found, what’s where. We checked the floor along the path we’d walked but hey, baby teeth are tiny. We also considered the fact that she swallowed it.

Olivia rinsed her slightly bloody mouth out at the water fountain (gross, I know) and we found our way to Tom. He high-fived Olivia and Alyssa declared, “Now she looks like a real kindergartner.”

In the end, yes, my child lost a tooth at Walmart when her sister hit her in the mouth. I am so proud.

But look! My ‘real’ kindergartener.