L has been working on a pair of wiggly teeth for months. They’ve been getting looser and looser, but they’d been hanging in for so long that I was starting to wonder if they’d ever actually come out — so when we sat down to lunch after a morning of adventures in the Science Center, I was shocked to see a gaping hole where his bottom right front tooth used to be.

“But I didn’t chomp anything crunchy, Mama!” he said, after shrieking with joy and surprise at the discovery of this new milestone.

I’m not totally convinced he doesn’t have a tooth working its way through his belly as we speak, but he was certain he didn’t swallow it, and more than a little concerned that the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t come visit him if he didn’t actually have a tooth to offer. So we made our way to the front desk of the Science Center, explained the situation to an incredibly nice member of their staff, and left my name and phone number on a pink post-it with “Lost tooth” noted in big letters.

I’m hoping she picked up on my “we don’t actually want this back” vibe. I will be incredibly creeped out if they call and say they found it, and can we come pick it up please.

In any case, L was consoled by this and made sure to write a letter to the Tooth Fairy to let her know that if she wanted to find his very first lost tooth, she’d have to visit the Science Center instead of his bedroom. And then he proceeded to lose another tooth that was threatening to topple over without the support of its neighbor – with a little help from Z this time.

In the morning, L was delighted and surprised to find this note outside his door attached to a mini Lego set, along with a couple bucks in the pocket of his Tooth Fairy pillow:

You might want to check your security cameras, Science Center. I think you may have had an after-hours visitor!