Tooth Fairies and Flossing Reminders

Soon Sophie will be visiting a pediatric dentist to have six of her baby teeth removed.  We noticed several months ago that a permanent tooth on the bottom was coming in behind her other teeth.  She takes after both her mother and her father, and there's just not room in her little mouth (believe it or not) for all those teeth.  Now she has two teeth growing back there.

So, we took her to our hometown dentist, who advised us to consult the orthodontist.  We had just been to the orthodontist for the first time a month previous for Hannah's first consult.  (Spoiler alert: The result of that appointment was to come back in one year for another consult, meaning no braces yet.  Yay!)

The orthodontist said Sophie needs to have 7 baby teeth removed to make room for the permanent teeth to move into place.  He says her tongue will do the work of slowly moving the teeth into position, and we'll do braces later on down the line.  It's best to get the teeth into place now though (by removing the baby teeth) so that the orthodontic work later will not be as extensive.

Two of her baby teeth that need to be removed were loose, so Charles told Sophie that he would double whatever the tooth fairy brings for any teeth that she wiggled out before her appointment on September 9th.  Since the dentist's fee is $150/tooth, he figured this arrangement was a win-win.

So, the night before we left for our trip to North Carolina, one of the two teeth fell out.  She very meticulously left it for the tooth fairy, along with this note outside her bedroom door:

"Hi, Tooth Fairy.  Can you be with me?  I am going to North Carolina tomorrow.  Bye."

I'm not sure if she was worried that the tooth fairy might not come that night or what, but I guess she just wanted to cover her bases!

And on the matter of teeth, there's a sign in my bathroom (made by Sophie) that's been helping me in my perpetual struggles to floss:

"Floss teeth, remember OK?"  OK!