From the X-files: close encounter with the tooth fairy

My darling daughter lost her third tooth two nights ago.  Because it fell out at 4 am, we figured the tooth fairy had already been past our house and wouldn't be back until the next night.  She carefully set it up on her bedside table in a cupcake liner, ready for pick-up.

Fast forward to bedtime last night.  I was feeling crabby, the kids were being extra pokey, and I shook out DD's comforter very briskly while getting her bed set up.  I turned to fill her drinking cup with water and remembered.  Oh, crap.  In my bedmaking frenzy I had whipped the cupcake liner off the table and onto the floor.  We searched and searched, but we couldn't find the tooth.  DD was surprisingly calm and resigned.  "Maybe she'll give me a dollar anyway.  Or maybe just a quarter."  I assured her that the tooth fairy would understand but because she still seemed a little worried, I offered to write a note:

Dear Tooth Fairy,
DD lost a tooth last night!  She had it all set up for you, but I accidentally knocked over the cup it was in and lost it.  Sorry!  Can you please leave her money anyway?  I promise she did lose one.
Thanks,
Her Mom

She approved of this so much she added a letter of her own, placed on top of mine:

AND WHAT DO YOU DO WITH MY TOOTH
LOVE, [name redacted to preserve intrigue]
OH AND MY MOM MAD A LETAR TOO

Aww.  She also showed me that she had left a notebook and pen beside the notes, ready for the tooth fairy's answer.  Hmm.  My saving grace was that she decided to sleep in my room last night, so I was able to go into her room and really think about the note without risking detection.

I thought about it for a while.  Should I write a note in my own handwriting, figuring she would be too young to notice?  I don't know.  She's pretty sharp.  Should I type something up on the computer using a swirly font?  She's always printing stuff off, so that seemed risky.  I decided the only thing for it was to write the note with my right (non-dominant) hand.  That meant it had to be short!  I also waited until right before I went to sleep, so my brain was a little fuzzy.  Here's what I came up with:

Sweet girl!
Sorry to hear your tooth was lost!  It's okay.  I use the teeth I do take and use them to make fairy scissors.  Hugs!  - T. F.

[Editor's note:  our tooth fairy rep doesn't take the tooth; she leaves it.  Hence the qualifying "the teeth I do take."]

Yep, you read right.  Fairy scissors.  What??  As soon as I wrote that I regretted it.  But for darn sure I wasn't going to write another note with my wrong hand.  So I sat for a moment, then thought, well, she's imaginative.  Who knows what she'll think of it?

And this turns out to be the best part.  In the morning, she reads the note and says, "Wow, the tooth fairy writes like a little kid."  (Thanks, honey, you try writing with the wrong hand sometime.)
So I say, "Well, she was probably hovering while she wrote, that would make it hard to write clearly."
She thinks for a minute, then decides, "No, I think it's because she's so small she had a hard time handling the pen."

Wow.  And the fairy scissors?  Didn't bat an eyelash.  She seemed to know ALL about it.  She described how you would use a molar with its roots:  the roots could be bent together to make scissor handles and you would carve out the tooth to make blades.  But she wasn't entirely sure how you would use regular kid teeth without those huge roots on them.  She figures exact details are unimportant when there's magic involved.

There sure is magic, kid, but you're the one making it.  I'll say it again, until you want to barf:  I love my kids; they are truly awesome critters.