It has been over a month and a half that Naomie’s front tooth started to wiggle. She felt it move a tiny bit and she already prepared us for the event. The last tooth she lost was the occasion for a nice letter to the tooth fairy. We were on a passage to San Francisco and it appeared that it made the tooth fairy’s job harder as she only brought a present two nights after. She explained her tardiness though: it was the weekend and the boat was sailing; it was hard for her to reach Ubi in time, she explained in a letter. Also, it was the weekend and that made sense to Naomie’s empathy for the hard work that the fairy performs daily. So this new wiggly tooth was a source of excitement but it also was a game of patience. The wiggling was noticeable when she let us touch it but it only marginally improved over time. So much so that Naomie instituted a schedule on paper on how much wiggling we should do on the tooth to motivate it to let go. But it wasn’t working much. We tried to gently pull it off; we tried less gently. We offered to use a plier from the toolbox or to be creative like attaching it to the chain before anchoring but she wasn’t interested in these approaches. A few years back, we pulled one of Noah’s tooth with a dental floss attached to a Nerf gun bullet; so we could offer some creativity and adapt with our environment. We let the tooth be and little by little it moved. Unfortunately it moved laterally rather than down: the new tooth was piercing through the gum and was pushing the wiggly tooth on the side.

Last week, she was feeling it could drop anytime so she would talk with her hand below her mouth in case it happened just then. It didn’t. We were concerned the tooth would let go during a night. It didn’t.

One morning, Naomie was playing legos and wanted to detach two small pieces assembled to one another. Instinctively, she would use her teeth as any kid playing legos. She was about to touch the lego piece with the tooth; she realized the potential consequence of that act. However, even if no contact happened, the tooth was maybe convinced it had it long enough and simply dropped in Naomie’s open hand.

She didn’t drop a beat and started to write the letter to the tooth fairy, as it was Saturday and it is still unclear to many the work days of the tooth fairy. The letter was ready and stowed under her pillow before noon, along with the tooth.

The next morning, both the letter and the tooth were gone. In their place, a little origami laid under the pillow. The origami was indeed a note and a container for two shinny coins of Polynesia. The note was thanking Naomie for her kind letter and nice baby tooth.

The neighbor tooth will probably start to wiggle soon; hopefully it won’t involve such a long process. We’ll see.