Tooth fairy!

 And then it happened! The first lost tooth- just shy of turning 7, Collin lost his first tooth, one of the two front teeth on the bottom. And of course, what goes with lost teeth? The tooth fairy.  Do you know the tooth fairy? I certainly don't anymore. It was quite a fiasco figuring out how to arrange her visit and learning about what she would bring. Collin came in the morning after her stealth-like exchange of tooth for money with a dollar and a book called "Bear's Loose Tooth". Pleased as punch, he put the dollar in his piggy bank and read the book to us all before 7 am.

 I'm not sure what the tooth fairy rules out, but after her first visit, it seems she leaves dollar bills at our house under pillows in exchange for teeth. Who knows what she does with all those teeth, but I imagine kids don't care all that much because they get the better end of the deal: a nice new dollar.

Collin had been waiting for some time to lose a tooth- he's a little behind the curve with most of the kids  in his class with two or three teeth already replaced by adult teeth, but when it finally happened, he took it in stride. I was the one with the bits of nostalgia wandering in. Sigh. Another milestone to growing up.

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, maybe its as because the year he turned 7 it felt like everything changed, maybe its because I'm trying to hold on to the threads that connect him to being such a small child for a little longer, but I wished for a moment he hadn't lost it. Don't get me wrong, I shared in his excitement, but as with so many other things this year, it was one more way to see how old he's getting and how quickly it all happens. It really is so fast. I can barely believe that he's a third of the way to adulthood and that in the precious 18 years I get to keep him with us, get to enjoy his generous heart and wonder, this first lost tooth marks a place that makes it easy to see that so much of it has already passed.

And so, the tooth fairy, as awesome as she is, probably needs to think about consoling this momma the next time she comes because the preciousness of it all combined with how fast it all happens really has stopped me in my tracks, all the while Collin is wiggling all his other teeth to see how quickly he can speed ahead.