Lost tooth #4

Yesterday, Sasha lost her 4th tooth, a bottom left tooth next to the center teeth (I guess it's also an incisor). She is still growing in that top left front tooth, so she is starting to look quite gap-toothed.

The story of how this one came out is kind of amusing to me. I had seen over the past week that the tooth was becoming increasingly loose, but I underestimated how soon it would be falling out. Yesterday, the weather was cooler than our usual heat. It was cloudy and breezy, so I decided Sasha and I would eat our lunch outside in the warm and breezy shade.

I made a simple dish of spaghetti noodles with butter, parmesan, and italian herbs for Sasha for her lunch. She and I sat at our outdoor furniture comprised of 2 outdoor chairs and a table. We ate and played with our iPads.

Suddenly out of nowhere, Sasha starts spitting out her noodles onto the table. And I mean spitting. I was horrified. My mom-instincts took over and I started scolding her fiercely for being so impolite as to spit noodles on the table.
"But Mom! That's the only way I can find my tooth in the noodles", she exclaimed. I was taken aback by her response, not quite sure what she was talking about. She searches through the noodle and spit puddle on the table until she finds what she was looking for: her tooth. She holds it up for me like a trophy.

I apologized for yelling at her, and she and I had a good chuckle together over the misunderstanding.

Lost: First Top Front Tooth

Sasha lost her first top front tooth. In my opinion, the loss of a top front tooth and its subsequent replacement with an adult top front tooth is a very appearance altering event. It feels like such a transition to me.

So, the tooth had been loose for a while, and a gap had opened up in the top row of Sasha's teeth. The gap was so large that it looked like she had already lost 2 teeth. People were asking her how many teeth she had lost, much to her annoyed confusion as she hadn't lost any yet. She had started to grow cautious with how she bit her food, and even avoided corn on the cob, one of her favorites, to prevent the discomfort of biting with a loose front tooth.

Eventually one evening, it happened. The tooth became so loose that it was barely hanging by a thread. One tiny little pull would set it free. But this is Sasha we are talking about. She was terrified. She accidentally bit the dangling tooth and it poked her into her gums and set her into a frenzy of anxiety. She wouldn't pull the tooth. She wouldn't let her father or I near her mouth for fear we'd just grab the tooth and pull it on her. Of course I was tempted to just hold her down and pull it. It was just dangling there temptingly. But no, we tried to calm her down instead.

I had to work at my in-laws restaurant the next morning, so I needed to get some sleep. As the evening approached midnight, we still couldn't get near the tooth. Jon stayed up with her and let her sleep with him downstairs, as we worried that the tooth would fall out in the night and that she would choke or swallow it in her sleep.

Sure enough, it did indeed fall out in her sleep. She woke up in the morning (while I was at work) and found the tooth in her cheek.