Our house had an intruder last week. A magical, imaginary one that we all anticipated with joy, but still. It feels like a bittersweet moment – one of my babies is big enough to loose a tooth.
I knew it was coming up thanks to a two-week stint of “See how loose my tooth is?! Mama, do you seeeeeee?” Yes, son, I see, and after bedtime I skipped over to Pinterest to learn the current level of Tooth Fairy shenanigans.
Not to sound like a dinosaur, but back in my day, a quarter was left under the pillow and I was ecstatic. Things have drastically escalated since then – hairspray and glitter on dollar bills, tooth and star shaped confetti, mini footprint trails made of powdered sugar, decorated tooth boxes, custom door hangers, and tiny pillows with pockets have all entered the scene. I knew we would want to do something slightly more than quarter, but is Google’s average of just over five bucks really accurate? That’s one heck of an inflation for an itty-bitty fairy! And glitter!? Despite my attempts at learning to embrace messes, the herpes of the craft world is still not something I willingly bring into our home.
We decided to meet in the middle. The tooth fairy wrote a teeny-tiny note and signed it with a signature I have now committed to doing at least fifty times. A dollar bill was left too, much to the grumbling of my husband who wanted to leave a five.
Our slightly under-whelming compromise was met with over-whelming enthusiasm. Six o’clock the next morning brought a six year-old barreling into our room with loud exclamations of “She came! She came! AND she brought me a dollar!” He told every single person he saw that day his big news – a total success in my eyes.
No matter how much, or little, you feel like you’re doing for your kids, know that it’s enough. The fact that you’re trying is enough. Keep showing up.
Disclaimer/Reality Check: Someone out there is reading this and grumbling about lying to kids. Childhood magic is my favorite part of parenting, and if they’re mad that I tried to make magic for them when they’re older, I will do whatever is required to repair that. We each get to make our parenting choices – these are mine. This column will be about motherhood, parenting, and homemaking for the most part. It might be about experience gifts one time or the inner hatred I have for disposable wrapping paper the next. Most importantly, I don’t ever want this column to make another mama think she’s not doing enough. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that you are, you’re doing great, keep it up. Sing it with me: no-one is doing it allllll!
