Nothing harder than pulling teeth
Grace has a really hard time losing her teeth. She gets so scared and will hardly let you look at a wiggly tooth, let alone actually touch it. She does have quite a few crazy stories about her teeth:
Her first loose tooth popped out as she was eating frozen mango.
Her second tooth became very wiggly when Grace and Maddy were fighting tug-a-war style over a puzzle piece and Maddy let go. Suddenly, Grace’s own fist landed squarely in her mouth and jostled the tooth. There was a lot of blood and freaking out, so after that Grace wouldn’t let anyone touch the tooth. It came out in Utah while she was eating yogurt at Grandma Debbie’s house. It wasn’t really the yogurt that got it out; really the spoon tapped the tooth on the way in and vuala! In her excitement to show everyone the tooth that had just fallen out, Grace misplaced the tooth and was very worried the tooth fairy wouldn’t know to leave her something. Her cousin Elizabeth helped her write a not to the tooth fairy to explain the predicament, and luckily the tooth fairy understood and still gave her a dollar.
She ate her third tooth. While munching on a drumstick ice cream cone at TT’s house (my Tia Estela), Grace suddenly realized that her tooth was gone. She had swallowed it! Once again, she wrote a note to the tooth fairy and all ended well.
This most recent tooth was a disaster. Again, for some reason Grace is very protective of her baby teeth. She refuses to let anyone wiggle it, and she is even hesitant to use her own tongue to work it out. Because of this, the last tooth died but still hung on strong. Everyone could see that the tooth was discolored and grey, but Grace wouldn’t let us touch it. Finally, at the family beach house Andrew convinced her that the beach tooth fairy would give her $2 (instead of the usual $1) if she got her tooth out while at the beach. He sat with her outside for 30 minutes while she went back and forth on wanting him to pull it out. There were so many tears as Andrew tried every trick in the book to relax Grace: holding her in his lap, smellng calming essential oils, playing relaxing music, promising treats or movies if he was able to get it done. Finally, Andrew and I basically had to hold her down as we yanked out the devil tooth. From the cries and screams you would think we were abusing her, and there were even some neighbors who came outside to make sure there was no foul play. We reassured them that everything was ok, and one kind neighbor dropped off a quarter and said, “This is an early payment from the tooth fairy.” Honestly, it was traumatic for everyone and I think Andrew and I have vowed to never try and pull another tooth again. But we got it out! And it was awful.
