Ever since I accepted the reality that my daughter has significant physical challenges, I have dreaded the losing-teeth phase. Perhaps it's because her teeth took so long to come in and I hate to lose something that we worked so long to obtain. Perhaps it's because I had some traumatic experiences losing teeth when I was a child. Perhaps I assumed that losing teeth would be much more difficult for her because everything has been much more difficult. I don't know.
Today, I took her to an occupational therapy appointment. She is practicing feeding herself and we're trying out various devices to help her do this. She loves to go because she gets to eat pudding.
Every other time, and we've been doing this for 4 months now, she has chosen chocolate pudding. Today she choose tapioca. When she was a toddler, the lumps were too much for her to handle. But today she didn't hesitate once.
Before she started working on the pudding, the therapist spent some time "alerting" her mouth. Suddenly, she asked me if my daughter had a loose tooth. We both looked at it and realized that indeed, it was VERY, VERY loose. But I still figured it would fall out this weekend.
The session went really well, and we headed home to get some lunch. When she opened her mouth, I was stunned to see a gap there. Somehow, somewhere, she lost that tooth without one whimper or second of drama. In fact, we have concluded that the tooth is genuinely lost. I cannot find it anywhere on her person, her wheelchair, in our house, or in the van. She has either swallowed it with the tapioca lumps, or it fell on the floor somewhere. (Imagine being the custodian who sweeps that up!)
Tonight, we're driving to my in-laws' home for a visit and to celebrate my niece's birthday. Looks like we'll be celebrating a visit from the Tooth Fairy as well. I have contacted the local Tooth Fairy there, and she said she will be happy to pinch-hit.
