“Are You the Tooth Fairy”?

Being born an old soul, our daughter Coco was what my Daddy use to call a “Philadelphia Lawyer”  from the day she started talking. If you are privileged to know her, I think you would heartily agree. She was a quiet and easy baby. She didn’t “say” much but just kind of took in everything with these huge blue eyes. Frankly, I was a little concerned. If she had not had her Daddy’s eyes, I would’ve thought I’d gotten the wrong baby at the hospital. But she was unmistakably marked by her Daddy. So much so that the first Sunday I brought her to church someone looked down into the carrier and said, “Well it’s Gregg Tipton in a bonnet”!

Knowing that she was a genetic mixture of my personality and Gregg’s (something akin to fire and gas) I expected a pretty hyper (crying, colicky, whining, up-all-night) baby. But, there she sat, curious but cool as a cucumber.

Then one day she woke up and remembered who she was. It was the day she started talking. And it wasn’t a word here and there, Coco was communicating in full blown sentences. She was under two and sounded like a four year old.

And with all of that talking came the Philadelphia lawyer-type communicating, and negotiating. Immediately she had a plan for everything. She had my day planned out for me and sweetly asked a string of unending questions. And mind you, not questions like "where did the moon come from" or "do dogs smile", but questions concerning the family’s schedule. As I patiently answered them, thinking this was how she learned, (silly me) she was actually giving me (truly) great ideas on how to improve the plan for the day ahead.

So you get the picture that our little Coco was a bit ahead of her time. Not one to “read” a picture book quietly in the corner, and certainly never one to play with age-appropriate toys (“Momma can I slice this tomato?”) she was a bit of a handful.

So, don’t ask me why I thought I could ever pull off the whole tooth fairy deal. I am not one to belabor the idea of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, but I thought it might be fun for the first tooth or two. I got Caroline and Coco a little tooth Fairy pillow with the itty bitty pocket for the little bitty tooth, and we set about waiting for the first fall.

Even though Caroline is slightly older than Coco of course Coco was the first to lose a tooth. Kissing her good-night I happily tucked the sweet little pillow in bed with her and once she was asleep, I placed a dollar in the itty bitty pocket of the pillow (mind you I had to convince Mr. Ten Days that we should not give her $5.00 for that tooth! I gently reminded him of how many teeth were in each of our daughters’ pretty little heads and that we could not afford to pay that much per tooth.) That night I placed Coco’s precious little tooth in my button box….I mean, it’s all I could think of, where did you keep yours?

A few weeks later, I sent Coco to my room to wait for me to come and “correct” her. That was our politically correct word for spanking. The phone rang, I answered and Coco spent some time sitting in my bed. Bored in a nano as usual, she began to look through the button box on my night stand and happened upon the tooth.

As I walked in she was turning the tooth over in her little fingers with the look on her face of a prosecutor examining ‘Exhibit A’. I sat down beside her, already feeling the tension mounting. I sensed I was ‘in trouble’. She slowly lifted those baby blues from “Exhibit A” and pinned me like a D.A. in cross-examination (I swear I expected her to say “where were you on the night of…”). She squinted her eyes and steely asked “How did you get this tooth”? I swallowed hard and said what any Mother on trial would’ve said: “The Tooth Fairy gave it to me. Yep, she came in here after she left your room and gave it to me, just like I asked her to.”  Not put off for a second, she raised up on her knees, took me squarely by the shoulders, looked into my eyes and said firmly, “Momma. Don’t lie.” I tried to look as innocent as possible under such intense interrogation.

Then came my hour of reckoning. “Momma. Are YOU the Tooth Fairy?”

Yes. Guilty as charged. Tooth Fairy. Cook. Santa Claus. Cleaning Lady. Booboo-Kisser.  Chauffer. Spanker. Consoler. Teacher. Counselor. Cheerleader. Prayer Warrior. Sibling Referee. Ambulance Driver. Biggest Fan.  And Momma. A Momma who misses those days.