Chocolate

Did you know you can eat chocolate straight from the freezer?

I didn’t, until last year, approximately three days after Easter.

I’d frozen the leftover chocolate bunnies and eggs to get them out of my sight then, on a rare craving, and because I don’t have junk food in the house, resorted to raiding the downstairs freezer. It certainly was edible - just slightly colder and crunchier.

So that plan didn’t work.

This year, under no such illusions, I simply hid half the kids’ haul around the house. Such was the volume, that its absence went unnoticed. Therefore, I was mostly hiding it from myself.

There’s no way anyone could eat that much chocolate without it having detrimental effects on their health. As it was, Master Seven lost another tooth over Easter. Luckily the tooth fairy found him on holiday but it was a close call. We’d gone away for a couple of nights and I’d taken the other half of the chocolate with us with the intent of palming most of it off to visitors. Trouble was, they had the same plan so we just ended up playing swapsies.

When the tooth came out and he’d finished making a big song and dance night fell but do you think three excited kids, hyped up from too much chocolate and sleeping in the same room were going to sleep?

Exhausted from all the organising, packing and travel I sat up in bed, gripping $1 in reminder and constantly drifting off, only to abruptly be jolted awake from their peels of laughter.

Finally all was quiet and I performed my duty but was woken before 6am by an excited Master Seven waving $1 in my face.

Then came the demands for their chocolate. “Mum, is it morning tea time yet?” they asked at 8am.

To distract them I got them to take some fish over to the elderly neighbours. But this backfired. Our kindly neighbour promptly returned the favour by producing three M&M-filled eggs from her spare room.

The kids came hurtling home, beaming from ear to ear and with the M&Ms rattling like crazy within their hollow eggs. Who was I to rain on their parade? They gutsed them down but, with the fish practically leaping into the boat all weekend, we had plenty to go round. 

It turns out the neighbour had plenty more M&M-filled Easter eggs stored in her spare room too.

I heard the familiar rattling from the other side of the fence and, this time, intercepted them.

We returned home with more chocolate than we left with and, before I had a chance to hide this latest stash, my willpower left me.

Did you know chocolate expires?

Clearly the neighbour has more self-discipline than me and had been holding onto these in her spare room for a long time. Perhaps I should suggest the freezer option?

Personally, I would forgo the freezer. If I’m going to play my own game of hide and seek next time a random binge strikes I’d rather have the prize at room temperature.

Return to School

If you’d asked me last week whether or not I was ready for the kids to return to school I might have said no. 

After re-establishing the pecking order at the start of the holidays things went surprisingly swimmingly. Further, upon returning home from a two-week beach holiday they were kept happily entertained re-discovering their Christmas toys to the point I didn’t even need to consult the “Surviving the Holiday” tips I’d cut out of a magazine.

But then, earlier this week, while I was enjoying this newfound time-out as the kids companionably turned their lounge upside down one floor below, Miss Four knocked out Master Sixes tooth and all hell broke lose.

Jolted back to my senses I raced downstairs to the tune of Master Six screaming blue murder. There I found him grasping his mouth, which was gushing with blood while Miss Four clutched her stomach looking sick at what she’d done.

“I might just put myself on the naughty step,” she uttered amongst the racket, leaving the room.

It was hard to stay mad at her after that.

By now we should be used to Master Six’ dramas every time he loses a tooth. It’s always a fiasco once he spots blood. After I’d cleaned him up and calmed him down I went back to Miss Four on the naughty stair and let her tentatively near her brother to see the damage and apologise.

The blood had stopped but he now had three top teeth in a row missing and was standing over the basin whimpering with Master Four’s arm around him while looking daggers at his sister in the mirror.

“You’re going to be rich with all these teeth falling out,” I said trying to distract him from potential retaliation.

“But mum,” piped up Miss Four. “Why does the tooth fairy want his teeth?”

“Because she buys them off him and takes them back to fairy land and makes necklaces out of them,” I replied making something up on the spot and feeling quite pleased about it. “That’s why you have to keep them clean – she only buys nice white teeth.”

“But why does the tooth fairy want necklaces?” she persisted, totally missing my point.

Anyway, the tooth fairy (who is now broke) paid well that night to make up for the pain. But this unscheduled debacle was the beginning to the end - cue World War Three.

Come Wednesday I’d had quite enough of playing referee amid the tales and tears, the banter of who’s marrying who (yes, they’re still obsessed with that) and calling each other “Poo-poo diaper babies” (in American accents) courtesy of the (soon to be banned) Cartoon Network channel.

So now they are safely ensconced within their respective school gates I’ve managed to restore the house back to its former glory and can breathe a sigh of relief that we made it through the holidays intact, bar several missing teeth.

Tooth Fairy

“Mum I don’t want to turn six,” fretted Master Six two years ago. “I don’t want my teeth to fall out because then I won’t be fansome.”

“What is fansome?” I asked.

“You know, it’s like when you’re pretty but you’re a boy.”

“Oh handsome!”

The sixth birthday came and went with all teeth still intact until finally several weeks ago, he mentioned it hurt to bite into an apple. He wouldn’t let anyone near his mouth but decided that, yes, the tooth was a bit wobbly actually.

Some kids are “wigglers” and some aren’t, I was told. Master Six definitely fell into the latter camp. In fact, despite the second tooth visibly coming through behind the baby tooth, it became apparent he’d rather pretend the whole thing wasn’t happening.

Because of this, it was all forgotten until Wednesday night, which was a bit of an anticlimax really. He was practicing rugby passes in the, ahem, lounge when his dad noticed a gap in his mouth. Thinking at first we’d omitted to share a momentous occasion I was summoned from bathing the twins.

“Where is your tooth?” I demanded a baffled-looking boy while simultaneously searching around on the floor.

“Well I did notice something crunchy in my sandwich,” was all he could offer.

Okay, he had just eaten a crunchy peanut butter sandwich.

“Do you think you crunched it into pieces or swallowed it whole,” I persisted.

“Crunched it into pieces.”

I dialed the number of a good family friend dental nurse and passed the phone to an increasingly-worried-looking boy who’d probably by now twigged that he had nothing to show to the tooth fairy.

“I swallowed my tooth,” he said feebly into the phone.

He was reassured that it was perfectly common for kids to swallow their teeth and to write the tooth fairy a note to put under his pillow. Or he could wait several days and it would probably come out the other end.

She also reassured that he would not have crunched it into pieces so it was likely to come out the other end whole.

Like the bead that got stuck up his sister’s nose I was keen to tack the first tooth into the baby book but dissecting poo for several days?

Actually, in these days of political correctness, isn’t the tooth fairy a male?

“Not a chance,” said his dad when I put this to him.

Well maybe it was a bit OTT keeping the first tooth after-all.

Yes, I decided, the baby book could do without.

Footnote:

# A local dentist says that when children swallow their teeth, parents often worry the roots have been left behind.

“What they can actually see is their permanent tooth coming through underneath.”

As the new teeth come through the roots of the baby teeth reabsorb until there is only the crown left and this is the part that is swallowed.

 “They needn’t worry. The body can’t absorb it. It will come out the other end and then if you want to look for it then you’re quite welcome.”

A common pattern is for the first tooth to appear after six months and to lose the first tooth after six years, although this is not cut and dry.

Dental therapists encourage children to wiggle out their own teeth and caregivers can call 0800MYTEETH for any concerns.