Pete's Tooth

Okay. This is the first time I've had a child who is getting grown-up teeth so forgive me if you think I overreacted, but listen to this!

On Monday, Pete came home and said, "Mom! My grown-up teeth are coming in! I can feel two of them!" Okay, but Pete, you've only lost one of your baby teeth. What are you talking about? Pete showed me, then. Her empty space was indeed getting a tooth, and also the tooth next to it was coming in, too, right behind her baby tooth!! Nuh-uh! That's not right! So I called the dentist, and the lady who answered the phone (using the dentist's new name and momentarily confusing me) didn't know what to tell me so we made an appointment for Wednesday. It meant that I would have to take Pete out of school in the middle of the day and cut short my reading buddy time, but if it would help us to avoid embarrassment and braces for Pete, it was totally worth it. My fear was that the dentist was going to say that the baby tooth would have to be extracted. My hope was that he had some special trick he would do to pluck the baby tooth out of Pete's mouth without her noticing so the tooth fairy could come. What happened was that he said, "She's normal. Don't worry," and didn't charge us for taking up his time (one advantage of marrying/being born into Husbandguy's family dentist of 30+ years). Also, Pete didn't think it was funny when I suggested that maybe she's turning into a shark...

But how proud of me am I! I didn't mention once to Pete until after the appointment that the dentist might have to cut out her tooth so she wasn't scared or worried at all when we went for her appointment. Yay me for not scaring my daughter!!

Oh, and the class didn't get shortchanged on the reading buddy thing because someone else's mom showed up and took over when I had to leave. It was convenient!