We love the Tooth Fairy

As Christians, we don't do Santa, we don't do the Easter Bunny, and we don't do much with Halloween. All in the name of good theology, we have not given any place to the cast of characters that other kids take delight in. The Tooth Fairy is the exception at our house.

We do the Tooth Fairy big time...with all the effort that other parents put into stringing up Halloween lights outside, standing in line at the mall for Santa, or hiding plastic easter eggs, we DO the Tooth Fairy. For Mattie's first tooth, it was magical enough to just have the cash appear. But then the other kids started saying that it was "just your parents." So with the next tooth, we took it up a notch, leaving "Fairy Dust" (glitter) under her pillow with the money.

It's been a while since she lost one, and the doubt was growing in her mind. She would ask periodically, and I would just be as vauge as I could without giving a straight answer.

Yesterday, when chomping an apple, out fell another adorable little baby tooth. I was nervous....what could I do to re-instate her faith in the magic of childhood? I have hardly any art supplies on hand, and anyway, she said the glitter I used before was too coarse to have been actual fairy dust...

My solution was two-fold. I scraped the glitter off a Christmas bulb....it was old and flaked off in a very fine powder....Then, I inked with a gold-tone marker a tiny handprint in the corner of the dollar bill.

She awoke this morning saying cautiously that it DID look more like Fairy Dust....but when she saw that gold hand-print....that was it! Her eyes lit up like rockets and she squeeled in delight, "She MUST be real!!!!"

Someday, when I have to fess up, I hope she realizes that even if the Tooth Fairy isn't real, I kept the idea alive out of pure addiction to that look on her face.