“The Tooth Fairy” paid another visit

On this side of the world, we call him “Ratón Pérez”—a supposed mouse who collects your teeth and leaves you money in exchange, something that seems pretty absurd but that we believe wholeheartedly as children. Ever since my son was a baby, we’ve kept that fantasy very much alive. I also think it’s a less traumatic way to cope with the pain of losing a tooth—at least my personal experience was SUPER traumatic and painful, whereas with my son, the process has been very simple.

He pulls his own teeth out, doing it little by little at his own pace but also pretty quickly. The last one, which came in two days ago, was hard to pull out, but he worked really hard to do it fast. no matter how much I insisted he take it out little by little, he gets really obsessed when he feels a loose tooth. He was pretty happy when he finally managed to pull it out, and now I have another tooth for my tooth collection. Many people say that keeping your kids’ teeth seems a little creepy, but I think it’s really sweet—a memento of his childhood and these days that will never come again.

Whenever he loses a tooth, he looks for money under his pillow, but money in Venezuela is so worthless these days that it’s not worth putting those worthless bills there, haha. The last time I did something like that, I put in a lot of small bills, and he thought it was a lot of money and wanted to buy a bunch of candy and toys, so I scrapped that plan for good, hahaha. My new strategy is to tell him that the “El Ratón Pérez” transferred the money to my bank account.

And at this point, I don't even know how many teeth are left to fall out—honestly, I've lost track of them and the order in which they come out, since he started losing them when he was very little, and it feels like it's been a never-ending process. Sometimes I get scared and think he pulled out one of his permanent teeth because I can't tell which is which anymore, but next month we have an appointment with the dentist for a follow-up and general checkup, and I’ll take advantage of that visit to get that question cleared up, hahaha.
