The Tooth Fairy Helps Haiti

My eldest daughter has been nursing two loose teeth (one on either side of the bottom of her mouth -- makes eating fun!) for a while now. I was aware of one of them, but only found out about the second loose tooth at 5:00am on Monday morning, when my daughter woke me out of a sound sleep to tell me about it. Probably could have waited 'til maybe, 6:30? Anyway, we were gearing up for another long bout of agony over these teeth -- issues with eating, brushing, you name it. Well, lo and behold, last night while she was brushing her teeth, one of them came out! No big fanfare, no begging mom and dad to pull it out so that she would be out of her misery, and then when we simply try to LOOK in her mouth, she starts backing away and crying. None of that! Just popped right out -- hooray!!! Anyway, she was SO excited about the tooth fairy coming, so we put her tooth in her sweet little Boyd's Bear Tooth Fairy Bear and I tucked her into bed. Then my girl told me that she wanted to take the money that the Tooth Fairy left her to school to put in the Haiti Fund that the kids have in their classroom! I was so surprised, touched and proud that she came up with that on her own! Sure enough, this morning she woke up and the Tooth Fairy had left her $5 (the value of a tooth has increased significantly since I was a child...) and she put the money into her school folder to bring it in for the Haiti fund. Now, I would like to think that my husband and I have managed to instill a sense of charity in our girl, but I don't think we can take all the credit. She has learned a lot about giving through Girl Scouts (was even excited the other day when I told her the troop was going to go sort canned food at the local food shelter -- actually said, "YAY!"), and seeing kids bringing in loose change to donate to the school's Haiti fund has also helped tremendously. Wherever the lesson has been learned, learning to be thoughtful of others in need is a truly valuable one!