While my daughter Gaia has been taking her first steps in recent weeks (see last Sunday's post) my son Dante lost his first tooth, which was a VERY exciting time for him. "It's loose! It's loose! It's loose! It's... gone!!!" (He actually had a couple of teeth extracted last year, because of a lack of enamel on them that made them prone to early decay, but that was a very different, unmagical experience.)

I'd forgotten how thrilling it is when your teeth are dropping out as a child, but this reminded me of when I'd be sitting in class in primary school, impatiently poking at a loose tooth with my tongue, trying to hurry it along on its way, wondering how much money the tooth fairy was going to leave in its place. The money has increased a lot since my childhood -- I guess even the fay universe is prone to inflation -- but it's nice to see that the excitement levels are still the same.