Our son Matthew was working on two loose teeth, the “front teeth” from the son, and was getting really excited as they started wiggling. Friday morning his patience was rewarded when the first one popped out in the morning.

But that wasn’t enough for him. The second one was pretty loose, so he kept working on it through the day. He was standing on the vanity for an hour, looking in the mirror working in back and forth during the afternoon.

He wanted to go with me to the store, so we went grocery shopping around 4-5 pm. In the second store he showed me how loose the second one was. I told him he’d better wait until we got home so he didn’t lose it. (An employee asked me if I needed help and I inquired about tooth containers. He seemed stumped by that one, so we moved along.)

Matt also made the executive decision that we should order pizza, so we called it in and picked it up. When we got home the rest of the family was watching some Disney Channel, so I whipped out a blanket so they could picnic and watch at the same time.

After a few bites, Matt glanced my way while happily munching on his requested pizza. I noted a change in his prior status:

“Matt, where’s your tooth?”

He stopped chewing, holding mushy pizza in his mouth while panicking as possibilities ran through his quick little mind. He said he didn’t feel anything crunchy. I got him a plate so he could examine his mastication content. Alas, no missing dentition could be found.

He swallowed a tooth.

He didn’t find this as amusing as his parents did, and he wept crocodile tears as we comforted him. We reassured him that the tooth fairy knows when little kids lose a tooth, regardless if it is under the pillow or not. This must not have soothed him, since he asked for big rubber gloves to do some, ahem, “checking” for the tooth the next day.

Thankfully, the tooth fairy didn’t let him down. He got a special little Lego set he wanted. And he didn’t have to call Joe the Plumber to help him with his lost tooth.