Katrina pulled her first tooth yesterday. The first one to come out naturally at least, she had to have her two front bottom teeth removed by the dentist several months ago and wasn’t awake for it. She had been wiggling this one for about a month now and it was ready to come out.

I told her the night before while putting her to bed that her tooth has been ready to come out for a while now and she could probably pull it out tomorrow if she really tried. The next day while I was working she came back and asked me if I really thought she could pull it out today. I told her, “yes” and asked if she wanted me to help. She said, “yes”.

We went back to her room and I let her work on it at first and alternated turns. She was excited but also pretty scared so after about a minute of trying each time she’d start getting nervous giggles and tearing up, so we’d take 5 minutes for her to calm down. During each one she asked me “What if a new tooth doesn’t come in!?”, “What if I swallow the tooth when it comes out!?”, “What if my mouth doesn’t stop bleeding!?”, “Does it hurt when the new tooth comes in!?” and about every other potential problem she could dream up. She also made up a complex set of hand gestures to indicate when it was and wasn’t ok to proceed with various tasks.

I tried to answer all her questions and explained to her that Dad is a pro at this and has done this 20 times before. Then showed her all of my teeth and explained I had to pull out a baby tooth for each one to come in. She was really brave and wanted to press on even though she was clearly scared.

With all the breaks it took us about an hour and a half to pull the thing out, but we finally got it. She was SO excited when it finally came out. Probably more so relieved. She wanted to rush out and tell mom, but I made her hold some tissue on her gums until it stopped bleeding first. I was so proud of her for sticking it out. She kept thanking me for helping her every 10 minutes.

Afterwards we showed mom and celebrated with some soup for dinner and ice cream later. That night the Tooth Fairy brought her $1 and Junie B. Jones: Toothless Wonder. Notice the similarity on the cover picture. That wasn’t intentional.