First Lost Tooth

Emily with her dear friend Garrett a few weeks ago

Emily is less than two months away from turning eight, and believe it our not, she just lost her first tooth yesterday! We had been getting very close for awhile, though. Over the past few days it had been looking pretty gross, positioned sort of on its side in her mouth (I decided to spare you by not posting a photo of it). I wasn't quite sure what was holding it to the gums, but she insisted that she couldn't get it out. She went for a routine cleaning yesterday and the dentist wasn't sure how it was still hanging on either. He put a little numbing cream on her gums and gave it a tug. It came right out and she was so excited. In the meantime, her adult tooth apparently got tired of waiting, so it decided to grow in behind the baby tooth a couple of months ago. We joked that she had become a shark with two rows of teeth. The dentist claims that, with the baby tooth out of the way, the adult tooth will magically slide forward somehow. In reality, though, all I can think about is the impending orthodonture required to get all of these misaligned teeth into their proper spots. Sigh.

Anyway, Emily was very excited to leave the tooth fairy the tooth and also a note that read,

"Dear tooth fairy, 

Will you come once a week? 

I need someone who can help me, like you.

Your friend,

Emily"

Apparently, she has some friend issues at school that she would like the tooth fairy's help with. When I volunteered to help she told me that the tooth fairy probably had more experience, so she would be a better option. Alrightly then. As you can imagine, the tooth fairy took the note and the tooth and left two dollars in exchange. Emily wasn't very impressed, though, because one of the kids at school gets ten dollars per tooth - ridiculous!

Other than the tooth excitement, Emily is anxiously awaiting the end of the school year. She has done very well this year and made a lot of progress, but she hasn't been too thrilled with the kids (too many boys) and the perceived lack of rigor at her new school. She has often complained that she isn't being challenged, which of course is a terrible thing, so we are going to try a different option in the fall. A school that still has small class sizes, but seems like it will be more rigorous, and has a lot more girls than her current school. She is definitely looking forward to the change.

As always, Emily keeps us entertained with her wit and humor. In addition, she often comes up with some interesting observations. Lately, she has been thinking a lot about time travel (who knows why). One night at dinner she announced, "Even if you go back in time, you are still going forward in time." Basically, the idea is that if it was in your future to go back in time, then when you actually do it, you are still progressing forward through your life. I hadn't thought about that before, but apparently I don't spend as much time on time travel as she does.

She also told me one day that she wished that she could know all the things that were going to happen in her life so that she could always make a plan in advance and be ready for things as they come. I tried to tell her that if she knew everything that was going to happen then life wouldn't be as good because there would never be any surprises. To this she replied, "There are no good surprises. Things only get worse. It is all a horrible nightmare." I'm not quite sure where all of that came from, but I assure you that she is actually a happy little kid (perhaps with a flare for the dramatic)!

One other piece of wisdom she gave us today was this - she said something to the effect of, "I put the good things in front of me and leave the bad things behind me." That is good advice. I told her that I was going to have to start practicing that one! Again, I swear that she is a happy, peaceful kid, but she does also seem to have an old soul that peeks through from time to time.