Ginger's First Loose Tooth

Ginger has had a wiggly tooth for over a month. 

She has been terrified of losing it.  Especially over the past week.  With school starting up again after Christmas Vacation Ginger actually asked me if she could just eat liquids all day.  I quickly told her that was impractical and not going to happen.  Ginger didn't want to have her tooth come out in her food at school.

 So we egged her on to pull it last night.

 Her brothers offered to pull it a bunch of times.  We had the missionaries over for dinner and they even offered to pull it for her.  She shied away from all of them:)

 It was so loose that she could bend it all the way forward.

 And push it pretty far back.  Except her adult tooth has already broken through and is blocking it from being pushed too much further.

 Time to try a paper towel.

 Nathan could hardly restrain himself from snapping it out.  She ran away from him and mom severely threatened him.

 Aggressive much?!?!  Being child number 4 means that everyone had some advice to give on how best to pull the tooth.

 Ginger was much more willing to let Darin have a look at it.  She even let him wiggle it some when he promised not to pull it.

 Nathan got her a mirror so she could see how her big adult tooth was already growing in place.  It's so far behind her other baby teeth, and the others aren't loose at all.  I have a feeling we may have another girl with expanders soon.

 Ginger was much more interested in Nathan after that.

 Time to bring out the flashlight.  I do love how interested all of our kids were in Ginger's big moment!  It would have been sad if she lost that first tooth at school.

 And wiggle some more.

Unfortunately when she looked in the mirror Ginger saw just a tiny bit of blood and got pretty upset.  I was comforting her on my lap and using the paper towel to dab at the blood and ended up twisting the whole tooth so it was laying down sideways.  Ginger was still scared but upset about the blood so when I told her it needed to come out now before she swallowed it in her sleep she let me snap it right out.  Honestly, I think I just bumped it.  That sucker was hanging on by a thread.

I asked her if it hurt and she said no and was instantly happy.  She's thrilled to have lost her first tooth!  It wasn't nearly as bad as she was imagining.

 Such a small little gap.

I should mention that Ken was on the phone with us for about 45 minutes through this whole ordeal.  He had just landed in Denver for his connecting flight to home.  He had talked to the kids about their day and then we had all gotten wrapped up in Ginger's tooth.  I'm sure people probably overheard all of our squealing and yelling and were wondering what was going on.  But Ken is such a good dad, he didn't end up having time to get anything to eat because he was on the phone with us the whole time so he ate dinner at 1 am when he got home.

 Checking out the new tooth.

 This picture made me laugh so much!

Ginger was so excited and quickly got a bag to put her tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy.  This morning when she woke up she stretched a little bit, then sat up in a hurry and found her money waiting for her!  That's the fastest she has ever woken up.  Usually she takes her time and falls back to sleep.  Then she asked Ken if he had seen her tooth.  He was smooth and said that he saw all the picture Mom took of her tooth and when she pulled it.