regeneration

Pookies lost her first second another tooth yesterday! One of her bottom teeth (a lower incisor per this page) fell out, and she said that it felt really good because it felt like her other teeth had room to grow. My mother-in-law gave her a dollar, and I think we did too. We don’t do the tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus at our house. (Yes, I know, that’s terribly cruel and horrible, etc.. ;) )

Today I was looking at my stats, and discovered that one person visited my blog yesterday through the WordPress.com tag search results for ‘Japan’. I and see what other bloggers have to say about that far-away place of interest to me. I came across this post about the ‘Japanese tooth fairy’. Well, apparently they don’t do the tooth fairy there. If it’s a bottom tooth, they throw it over the roof or place it on the second floor of a two-story house. If it’s a top tooth, it’s placed on the bottom floor, under the floor, or presumably buried. This is to ‘encourage the top teeth to grow down and the bottom teeth to grow up’. Interesting, eh? Whitney also linked to this site which gives the other traditions around the world. Some examples:

1. In Mexico, a mouse comes instead of a fairy.
2. In France, a toy is left instead of money.

Other countries simply keep it as a keepsake. I don’t think that’s quite as fun. Personally, I would want a Matchbox car or something, but that age is long past, and I would much prefer to keep my current teeth, thanks.

edit: Oops, Beautiful Wife reminded me that it’s Pookies’s second tooth that she’s lost. The other one wasn’t as noticeable, though. Apparently Pookies liked losing teeth so much, she lost two more yesterday! :)

edit #2: Tina pointed out that Beautiful Wife said it was a different number in her blog. I changed this post to be accordingly vague. She’s the career mom, ask her! :)