I'm the Tooth Fairy

I've been away on vacation.  Lovely!
Now I'm back and that is even lovelier.  I was worried about my garden and the chickens (both survived).  We mostly swam in the pool, played games, and got inspired.  I needed that.  So many things to change in my life and I feel motivated to do it!

The biggest news of the weekend:
Jack lost his first tooth.
He's 7 1/2 so he's been rather discouraged about losing them late.  I like it though.  He has horrible teeth and the bigger his jaw can get, the better!!  Time to find ourselves an orthodontist (the dentist recommended spacers as soon as he started losing teeth) to widen his very crowded mouth.

Jack made out with $2 this weekend.  I think he should put it into the orthodontist fund.  My mom's boyfriend declared himself the tooth fairy and gave him a shiny Sacajawea dollar and I gave him a paper one.

That's right.  I gave it to him, not the tooth fairy.  Because I am THAT mom.  The one who doesn't play along.  My kids have never had a visit from the Easter Bunny.  "Santa" leaves gifts but they don't sit on any one's knee or mail anything off to ask for them, and mom and dad are the tooth fairy.

This wasn't an easy decision.  There's a surprising amount of peer pressure to conform.  After all, you don't want your kid to be THAT kid that ruins it for everyone else.  And I do try to make sure my kids don't ruin it for your kids. 
But more importantly to me, I want my kids to trust me. Always.  So that when we read about Christ rising from the dead and Jack says (like he did today), "You mean we think that's what happened." And I can answer back that I know that's what happened.  And he can believe me.  Because I haven't lied to him about anything else.  Now, before I get nasty comments, I'm not saying everyone has to do this.  I'm sure your kids will be fine.  I was raised with the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy and I turned out okay.  Actually, that's not totally true.  I left the church when I was 18 because I didn't really believe anything I was raised with and was agnostic for about a year before really sitting down and reading the Book of Mormon and finally gaining a testimony ... SO MAYBE the Easter Bunny really did do me harm.
Hard to say.

I know it's fun.  I know we want to give our kids a little bit of magic.  But the thing is (if you're Christian anyway):  Christmas is magic because it's the celebration of the birth of our Savior, NOT because of flying reindeer.  Easter is the most holy of holidays, not a day for gorging on Cadbury Mini Eggs.  Sweet, delicious Cadbury Mini Eggs...mmmmm.  And as much as I loved the magic from all that as a child, it didn't make up for knowing that my parents looked me in the eye when I asked if it was real and bold faced lied to me.  Maybe everyone else is nonchalant when they learn the truth, but I was really hurt my own parents lied to me.  I really should bring it up with my therapist some time.

We still have fun despite the lack of deception.  We celebrate spring with egg hunts and jelly beans.  We give and receive anonymous gifts from the pseudonym "Santa" while doing a history lesson about the real St. Nicholas, and last week my son told me to make sure I looked under his pillow before going to bed.  He had left a note for the tooth fairy to please let him keep his tooth.  I folded it up and placed the tooth and money inside and in the morning he thanked me.
Because it's fun to pretend!  It's also a lot less creepy than a strange flying woman sneaking into your room at night or diabetes inducing bunnies.  

I'm still debating the whole money part of it, seems to just play into entitlement mentality.  Also, $1 seems excessive to me (I got $.25), but Igloo talked me into it. Maybe with the girls I'll take them to their favorite restaurant or something to celebrate the rite of passage and then be done.  Anyone else out there do things differently that has some ideas???  Does everyone else think I'm extreme?  Did I change your mind?  Are you reporting me to CPS for abuse? 

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