Aric has a tooth. You can see it, just barely starting to poke up through the bottom gum, but its there. It’s through. He officially has a tooth, and another one is going to join it within a matter of days.

This business with the tooth doesn’t seem right to me. It seems like it doesn’t follow the natural progression. Like, he has a natural progression of independent movement – rolling front-to-back, then back-to-front, then getting up on his hands and knees, then scootching backwards, then forwards, before finally crawling. Crawling looks like it’ll be happening soon, and that seems perfectly normal to me. I’ve seen him go through all the phases leading up to it, so I’m mentally ready for it.

I’m not ready for his tooth. It feels like it just sort of appeared. I understand there’s the whole teething process that he was going through, but that doesn’t have stages. It’s more like 1) Baby in pain, 2) Baby has tooth. And now he has a tooth.

Now that he has a tooth, all I can picture in his mind is the first time he walks into the living room showing me the tooth he lost, and then me taking him into his room to put the tooth under his pillow, then sneaking back in at night when he’s asleep and putting $1.91 under his pillow (growing up, I always got one of every kind of coin), then having him show me the surprise that the Tooth Fairy left him, smiling a big, partially toothless grin.

I know it’s just a tooth. He’s got plenty more to go before they’re all in there, and I have plenty of time before I’m trying to avoid the squeeky parts in his bedroom floor. But I’m still not ready for it.

My little boy has a tooth, and he suddenly seems so much older.