A Tooth, and A Turtle

So, this is the story of how Charlotte had her first visit from the tooth fairy when she was STILL TWO YEARS OLD.

Okay so we took her for her first regular dental cleaning last week. Milestone on its own, right? Well in the process of that visit, we learned two things:
1- she gets the award for being the most chill at the dentist (or maybe in almost any circumstance, actually).
2- she has a wonky tooth.

To be fair, we knew about the wonky tooth. Kind of. I mean, we noticed it when she was a baby; one of her bottom teeth got this dark spot we couldn't brush off, and then after some time the dark spot seemed to go away and it hollowed itself out into a little... hole? Or something? Which made the top of her tooth a little jagged but it didn't bother her and it didn't bother us, so we went on our merry way.

WELL.

It turns out that little hole goes straight down to the tooth's nerve, which means all her everyday mouth bacteria gets in there, and since the nerve goes straight down to the root, well... you know where this is going.

Dissolved root, sitting in a big ol' abscess, and the only way to clean it out is to take the tooth. Fast forward six days later and she had a wee bit of dental surgery and it's now gone. So long, wonky tooth, we hardly knew ye.

Truthfully it was not that big of a deal (except that this has been a hellllll of a week with the air conditioner breaking //HASHTAG: ALWAYS SOMETHING// and the baby being rilllll fussy and Mark is out of town again, so I'm flying solo, and I basically had a breakdown on Monday. There was lots of crying. (Not just Ali.) Lots of cussing. (That wasn't Ali at all.)

Anyway. Anyway! *brisk clap* Charlotte's procedure was fine. She handled it great, no crying until the very end when Nathan and Anneliese came back to see her with hugs and kisses and she cried and smiled all at once. (Feelings are weird, kid. Welcome to your future.) She hated the numbness in her mouth and she spent most of the evening just nodding and shaking her head at our questions, since she wouldn't talk.

But she was mostly a champ, and she will be fine, even though her smile is different now and it makes me feel funny. (The same thing happened with Anneliese's injury. Somehow a baby-smile era ended, really fast, too fast.)

And last night, in a midnight panic for tooth fairy planning, a mini magnadoodle took the place of that little tiny orange treasure chest (containing a tooth, ewww) on her windowsill.

Oh! OH! And here is thing you wouldn't think is relevant to this story BUT IT IS: we found a turtle in the pool! We asked Charlotte if she felt up to swimming after dinner (*nod nod nod*) so the kids were out there playing and splashing, for a good while, and then suddenly Anneliese looked up and there was a TURTLE swimming happily right by her shoulder.

Y'all. Anneliese has never moved faster in her life than getting out of that pool and away from that turtle. She was terrified. Like, completely lost her sh!t. Abject weeping.

I got the turtle out of the pool with the skimmer basket (no, not with my hands. I am not scared of turtles, but I don't want to hold them with my hands, because they pee out of fear, and their pee smells really bad and is impossible to wash off, and don't ask me how I know this, it is just a thing I know) and set him free to roam on the other side of the fence, away from our pool and dog and kids. And let's just say if I were doing shots for every time one of the kids said "turtle" in the hour following that and bedtime, bedtime wouldn't have happened because omg "hey mom, turtle, turtle, turtle, mom, turtle, hey mommy, turtle turtle turtle TURTLE" was basically all I heard.

ANYWAY. All that to say, when I *ahem* the tooth fairy got into Charlotte's room last night to swap the magnadoodle for the tooth in the treasure box (y'all, do you ever just say sentences, and then stop and think to yourself wuuuuuut? parenting is everything and nothing I thought it would be), and she was half asleep in her chair, and promptly burst into tears telling me there was a turtle in her bed.

Okay, I won't lie. I checked. I did.

I whipped those blankets back, Fraulein Maria style, just to make sure. (It was late! I was a little creeped out, okay?) But there was no turtle, and it was just a bad dream, and it took some tricky maneuvering but the tooth fairy got the swap done under cover of darkness while soothing a turtle nightmare, which I'm pretty sure deserves some gold stars. Someone send me gold stars. Gold stars, please!

But then she woke up twice more, with the same turtle-in-the-bed panic, and neither of us slept worth crap all night. I was expecting a hard night because of mouth pain. I was not expecting a hard night because of a TURTLE PANIC. These are the things one just cannot plan for.

But she was still thrilled in the morning to find the mini magnadoodle. She has barely put it down all day, she calls it her treasure.

She has also told me numerous times that Another Nathan brought it to her. *head desk*

And that's the story of how Charlotte survived her first dental surgery, the tooth fairy, and developed a fear of turtles, ALL IN ONE DAY.