She came running across the playground, her loopy curls bouncing as her skirt blew in the wind. "Mommy!" she yelled as she tackle-hugged me.
"Hi! How was your day?" I asked. It's the same question I ask every day when I first see Alexis after school.
She stepped back a half step, grinned from ear to ear, and said, "LOOOOOOOOOK!"
"I think you forgot something on the swings," I said as I worked to hide my TOTAL AND COMPLETE PHLURRRPPGAG from seeing that gaping hole in her face.
"MOM," she chided just before giggling. Some day she's going to letimately hate it when I tease her like that, so I try to take advantage of these days of tolerance while I can. "I lost my tooth!" she bragged.
"Oh," I said before throwing a few shiny things in the air and screaming "SQUIRREL! PLEASE! ANY TOPIC BUT THAT TOPIC!"
Alexis completely ignored my attempts to throw a distraction party and instead went on to tell me The Tale of Losing Her Tooth At School. She told me all about how she and a friend had the exact same loose tooth, so they spent recess trying to decide who had the looser tooth. It was a contest of epic proportions, with the winner sure to rule the land of first grade forever and ever.
"Mom, I bent mine all the way up to my gums!" she gleefully reported as she twisted her hands around in an attempt to demonstrate the 180 degree turn her tooth had completed.
I wretched, gagged, and otherwise lost my cool.
"But then it fell out, so I lost," she continued, clearly disappointed because apparently the kid who no longer has a tooth in her head can't win the battle for loosest tooth.
First graders are weird.