It’s 10pm, and I need to go to bed.
But I can’t.
Because I’m waiting for my daughter to be ALL the way asleep, so I can army crawl into her room and slide my whole arm under her pillow, without waking her up, to locate a tiny baby tooth, drag it out and replace it with the only cash I had in my wallet, a $5 bill.
$5 is entirely too much money to give a child for their fourth lost tooth, and I needed that cash to pay a coworker tomorrow, but she unexpectedly pulled her tooth out tonight, so here we are.
I hate being the tooth fairy.
Who decided we are all doing this, and why is it the same person who decided we were all doing Elf on the Shelf? Who started this? Which person decided we were putting TEETH under pillows?!
I don’t know how long this trend has been around, but y’all! We have the power to stop this madness! Teeth are disgusting. Full stop. Wiggling baby teeth that turn different directions and make bubbly squishing sounds are the stuff of nightmares. When they finally fall out, we should be yeeting them into the sun.
But no. We are washing them off and putting them under a pillow so that we can stay up too late, sneak back in the room, and give our child OUR money. We have to check the market rate for teeth because inflation apparently applies to the tooth fairy, too. And none of us get a pass because all the kids talk to each other and expect this thing to happen.
I know, I know. It’s fun. The kids love it. It was fun the first time our first child lost her first tooth. I was excited, too. But once you start, you can’t stop. You have to keep going for all the teeth for all the kids. Do y’all realize how many teeth these kids have? 20! Each! I have three kids, which means a total of 60 baby teeth that will eventually fall out. Sometimes multiple kids are losing teeth at the same time. I can’t keep doing this.
That’s it. That’s the rant.
I did recently turn to a few savvy moms for tips on making this better without totally canceling the Tooth Fairy. Since we’ve had a few small mishaps where the Tooth Fairy couldn’t reach the tooth under the pillow or the money got lost while my children flung about in their sleep, the Tooth Fairy is bringing a door knob tooth pillow on her next visit. Like the one shown below, my kids can put their tooth in the little pocket, hang it on the door knob, and the tooth fairy will leave money in its place. This is still a disgusting trend that I think future generations will be horrified by, but at least this takes the risk out of waking your child up and forever ruining the Tooth Fairy, Santa, and the Easter Bunny.
