Listening

One of Leta’s top two teeth has been loose since Nixon resigned, and stop it right there. If you even think about making a joke about wanting two front teeth for Christmas I’m going to walk you to the door with a cardboard box full of your belongings.

Someone discovered a Barney Christmas special on Netflix that’s been playing on an endless loop, and the girls are lucky that I haven’t shouted OH MY GOD SANTA IS DADDY.

Also? Get this shit. The parents in this special episode can’t see Barney. They’re always walking out of the room right when he walks in. So of course they don’t believe the kids when they say he exists. Barney is totally ripping off Snuffleupagus. I don’t care that adults can now see Snuffleupagus, THAT’S NOT THE POINT. The big purple dude does not have that kind of cred, as if I needed another reason to roll my eyes and pretend I’m jerking off every time he comes on screen.

Sorry, guys. I’m being inappropriate. This is a mommyblog after all.

Leta’s tooth. GOD. Every time we tried to pull it she reacted as if a terrorist was taking over a plane. Which is bad news for her if a terrorist does take over her plane because they will want her to shut up.

She’s already lost two teeth, there is no reason for her to go insane. Even the Avon World Sales Leader couldn’t convince Leta that we needed to pull it, and you guys already know this, but my mother could convince The Pope that The Book of Mormon is one hell of a read.

Last week that tooth starting acting like a lazy eye and couldn’t decide what it was looking at. We’d be eating dinner and a piece of food would nudge the tooth and it would start staring in the other direction. What would your reaction be? Reasonable and collected? Didn’t think so.

“OH MY GOD, LETA, OOOH, THAT’S JUST… UUUUGHHHH… You’re going to swallow that tooth, and the tooth fairy does not visit toilets.”

One: I just convinced her that she’s going to swallow her tooth.

Two: that UUUUGHHHH made her think a spider had fallen on her head.

Three: “Will it bite me when it comes out?”

Total hysteria. And that hysteria continued on Saturday morning when it looked like it might fall out if someone in Montana sneezed in our direction. That’s when I got really worried that it would fall out and she wouldn’t be able to find it, and then what we thought was hysteria would just be some pathetic opening act.

Cami had driven up from Provo to hang out with us. (SIDE NOTE: Cami found a website where people were talking crap about a variety of subjects, including me, and one commenter jumped on the pile with, “I mean, how immature do you have to be to hang out with 20-yr-olds?” And Cami was like NOT COOL, NOT COOL. I’M 23.) She and I were several feet away on the floor playing with Marlo as Jon tried to negotiate a peace treaty. He had Leta wiggle it forward, then backward, and then would talk her off the ledge every time it felt weird (her words). Except, he and Leta have this dynamic where they will talk each other into a corner and then back out in one giant, infinite circle. A forty-five minute circle! And Jon doesn’t even work out!

Cami finally looked and me and said, “Guurl, it’s time I take over.”

(Such an immature way to say girl. GOD.)

Cami had no horse in this race. If she hurt Leta’s feelings she knew that it wouldn’t be her name brought up in therapy 30 years from now. Also, she doesn’t have any kids and still thinks that her own will ask her how high when she shouts JUMP! (Shhh, don’t tell her the truth.)

“Hey, Leta,” she said with the voice of someone not aged by years dedicated to someone else’s bowel movements. “Your tooth is really loose, and I know you’re scared. But I’m going to pull it, k?” Leta started to hyperventilate, fought Cami as Cami shoved her hand in her mouth, and POP! Cami yanked that mother effer out as if pulling someone else’s tooth isn’t the creepiest feeling in the world.

Leta began to shake all over, like she had been stuck in an icebox for a few minutes shy of frost bite. I thought she was going to start wailing, and I braced for it. Braced for it. Braced for it, when she suddenly yelled, “CAMI IS AWESOME!” And then she turned to Cami, blood dripping from the wound, a space big enough between teeth that you could build a suburb, and said, “LET’S TAKE A PICTURE.”

“Yeah, guuurl,” Cami answered. “I don’t think RIGHT NOW is the kind of picture you’re going to want to look at when you’re older.”

Fast forward to one o’clock in the morning when she showed up to our room, leaned over into my face with her hair jutting out straight from her head at impossible angles, and that gaping hole in her mouth. “I’m scared!” she yelled in a voice as hoarse and rough as sand paper.

I did not wet the bed, but I am still clinging to the ceiling where I’ve figured out how to type upside down.