by Laura Falin posted in Parenting

Parenting can be hard.
All day long, you run around after children who have the stamina of endurance athletes. At night while you're trying to recover, you're often joined by one of those kids who was lonely or having a bad dream...and you spend the rest of your evening getting kicked in the spleen. They need you while you're in the shower, or going to the bathroom, and they expect to be fed at least three times a day but usually way way more.

Then when kids are 4 or 5, you get hit with one more responsibility. No longer can you put them in bed and pass out on the couch until you wake up with a start and stumble into bed. Now you have to stay awake until they're asleep, tiptoe into their rooms, and swap their discarded teeth for money. For the tooth fairy to work, you have to plan ahead to have cash on-hand that night. You have to stay awake long enough to make the trade. AND you have to actually remember to change up your normal nightly routine instead of just heading up to bed. The first few times, it's easy and you wonder why anyone would have trouble with this. By Tooth #16, you're a forgetful mess.
It's too much, I tell you.

Our tooth fairy is an abject failure. She's forgotten to visit for up to a week at a time. She has, on occasion, stolen a dollar from a sibling to put under the pillow, vowing to pay it back. And sometimes, rather than the standard dollar, she's left combinations of dimes, nickels, and dozens of pennies to...