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Tuesday, January 5, 2010

So what does the tooth fairy bring these days?


By Jen P, Charlotte Smarty Pants

We're on round two of the tooth fairy since my 6-year-old finally has a loose tooth. We're totally late in this category, my kids get so mad that they are the last ones to loose a tooth! I remember when my oldest was close to losing her first tooth, she actually had a few friends who got $20 from the tooth fairy. I was horrified! That was obviously pre-recession and I'm pretty sure the parents had a few cocktails the night of the tooth fairy visit and only had a twenty in their wallets! And so their tooth fairy expectation was quite high! Ours is a little different.

Lucky for me, I'm a tiny bit of a pack rat, but only with sentimental stuff. My tooth fairy left me rare coins - a half dollar, a Susan B Anthony dollar, even a $2 bill. These rare treats were cherished and I never felt like I could spend them. So 30 years later, I still have them (good Lord, I'm an old goat!). I've given 6 of my coins to my oldest. I think I only have two left stashed in the back of my drawers. I keep telling myself that I'm going to get more coins from the bank. That has been on my to-do list for a year now and I better get on it since I have round two coming fast! Our tooth fairy always leaves sparkles by the pillow and tooth box to leave her mark (I highly recommend a tooth box since these teeth are TINY and you may never find them under the pillow! I got mine for $5 at Toys & Co in Cotswold). The bummer about starting this tradition is if you are ever out of town for the tooth fairy visit. And you can bet this has happened to me! When we got that phone call (we had a sitter for the weekend), we knew we had to jack up the tooth fairy stash and leave $5 - we had no rare coins and certainly no access to sparkles (aka glitter). I could hear the disappointment in my daughter's voice the next morning. She said, yeah, the tooth fairy didn't even leave her magic dust. She could have cared less that she got a 300% raise!

So I'm asking you Smarties what your tooth fairy leaves these days? Ours leaves two coins (usually totaling $2) and I'm thinking maybe $5 for molars since those come out when the kids are around 12. What are your tooth fairy traditions?

4 comments:

catherine said...

I started out with the Susan B Anthony, but then I realized that I was not organized enough to always have one on hand when my kids lost a tooth! I guess I should have gotten a bunch at once, but never did. So, I ended up switching and we now leave two $1 bills. I know, slack momma!

Allison T. said...

We have only lost 4 teeth in my house so far. My son lost his first tooth at age 4 after falling down the stairs, so he got big bucks for that one. The other 3, he received anywhere from $1 to $2 per tooth.

Tracy said...

We've only lost 2 teeth in our house so far ... the first he got 5 because he worked so hard to pull it out all by himself. The second fell out 2 days later and he got 2 bucks for that.

But the best part was the old Wet and Wild silver body glitter I had tucked WAY in the back of a bathroom drawer (call me a pack rat), that I coated the dollars in to give that extra special "magic" touch. Jake thought that way pretty cool!

Anonymous said...

We give the gold $1 coins. Two for the first tooth and one each thereafter. The girls love that they've hardly ever seen them anywhere else and when they do see them, they say "ooh, someone spent their toothfairy money! "

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