Tooth troubles

We dubbed it "the tooth that would never fall out." Julie even wrote a story about her stubborn tooth. It began to wiggle around Christmas time, and it refused to exit her mouth until two nights ago.

Even then, the tooth was literally yanked from from Julie's mouth. Let's just say the night Julie's tooth was finally removed wasn't a finer parenting moment for Scott and me.

 It all started with the genius idea to tape a video for America's Funniest Videos. "AFV" is our favorite family show. Every Sunday after dinner we snuggle on the couch and crack up at the nitwits on TV. Attention-cravers like their parents, Julie and Johnny have desperately tried to enact hilarious moments for us to capture and send to AFV, in hopes of winning the big prize--$10,000. Well, we were sure we had the best idea the other night.

It all came about as we were trying to think of ways to pull out Julie's tooth. It seemed to be hanging by a skin thread at that point, but it just wouldn't come out. Julie decided we should tie a string to her tooth, and tie the other end of the string to a remote control car. Then, as the car raced away, her tooth was sure to fall out. This all sounded like wonderful idea and a shoo-in for AFV.

 Unfortunately it was much more traumatic for Julie than we counted on. After the first few runs of the remote control car, Julie became frantic and wanted the string and car off her tooth. By this point, the string was wound so tight around her tooth it was unable to come off. Hilarity and drama then ensued, as we chased Julie around the house trying to pull the string off her tooth, and hopefully the tooth out of her mouth. She whined. She howled. She screamed. She paced.

Of course we could have simply cut the string from the car, but Julie was absolutely convinced we were also going to cut out her tooth. This in and of itself was hilarious, so Scott taped Julie freaking out about the possibility of someone cutting out her tooth with scissors.

Eventually, she let Scott cut the string from the car, and somehow Scott yanked the string off her tooth with her tooth still remaining intact in her mouth.

Finally, an hour or so later, as Scott read Julie "Charlotte's Web" while gently rocking her tooth back and forth---it came out.

What a dramatic tooth debacle. At least you can look out for us on AFV.