Keeping the dream alive

Zeke has had a wiggly front tooth for at least a month.  It got aggressively wigglier this past week, and because he knows it totally grosses me out, he's made a point of constantly showing me how it's just hanging by a thread.  LOOK MAMA NO REALLY LOOK DOES THIS FREAK YOU OUT IT DOESN'T WELL HOW ABOUT THIS NO REALLY LOOK!!

See?  See, Mama?  NO REALLY, LOOK!

For fuck's sake. 

A number of friends made suggestions along the lines of dental-floss-and-a-doorknob, which is seriously disgusting.  And thankfully, not necessary.  The tooth came out at school yesterday, all on its own (or at least, unassisted by me, which is the important thing).  They even gave him a cute little tooth-shaped box to bring it home in.

I was all set to play tooth fairy, which Zeke still believes in.  He decided that he wanted to sleep on the floor of my bedroom in a sleeping bag.  I was a little nervous, because I feared that if he just put it on the floor, it would get shoved around during the night and thus be difficult to locate and remove without waking him.  Then he said he was going to put it in his Stuffie (a big stuffed hippo that has numerous zip pockets).  I encouraged this, as it would make the tooth location/money provision process much simpler.

But then when I checked at around 4:30 in the morning, the tooth wasn't in the hippo.  Knowing that if I started trying to rummage around under the sleeping bag (with him in it), he'd wake up, I just shoved a dollar in the hippo's mouth, zipped it up, and went back to bed.

When Zeke woke up, he asked, "did the tooth fairy come?"

He reached under the sleeping bag and found the little tooth box.  His head immediately dropped to his chest and his lower lip started trembling as if a cartoonist had been asked to draw a picture of "little boy, utterly dejected." 

"Hey!" I said, "why don't you check the Stuffie?  Maybe the tooth fairy put your money in there so it would be easier to find?"

He unzipped the hippo's mouth and found the dollar.  "Look, Mama!"

"See?"

Meanwhile, I took the little tooth box and opened it, letting the tooth slide into one hand.  With the other, I held out the box.  "Zeke, she did get your tooth!  The tooth box is empty!"

He smiled and said, "huh!  How about that?"

Someday, I'll have to tell him this story, if for no other reason that to instruct him on how to lie effectively to his own children.