A little something for the tooth fairy

This morning, Will began talking about how many teeth Owen has, and that apparently got the tooth fairy on his brain. Soon he had a plan for a morning project.

“I’m going to make a sign for the tooth fairy. It will say: ‘This is where Will sleeps. He’s the little kid.’ "

I asked him if he thought the tooth fairy would have any reason to come to our house in the near future (obviously Will’s not quite to tooth-losing age yet). Usually, I told him, the tooth fairy comes to your house when you lose a tooth and often she leaves a little something for you – maybe a couple quarters – in exchange for your tooth.

But Will thought it was about time for the tooth fairy to be on the receiving end of things: “I want to give her the surprise,” he said. “Maybe I could even give her a little present. I could give her a little bit of money so she can buy what she’s going to buy.”

And then, he got to worrying more about whether the tooth fairy might not find him if she did come to our house:

“But I want her to know she needs to go in that room. I’m worried she might wake Owen up when she comes and she doesn’t know where to go so we should leave a sign on my door.”

We could do that, I said.

“Is the tooth fairy a boy or a girl?” Will asked suddenly (this was after using the feminine pronoun to refer to “her” throughout our conversation to this point).

Well, what do you think the tooth fairy would be? I asked, hating to push my female interpretation of things on him just because that’s what I pictured decades ago when I was losing my baby teeth.

“She seems like a girl to me,” Will said.

Then he went back to eating his oatmeal and we never did get around to making the tooth fairy sign.

So if Owen wakes up tonight (and he will), I might have to blame some bumbling toothfairy -- come to claim her surprise money but waking up babies instead.