The Epic Story About Two Teeth

Oh, these boys and their teeth.  They have been losing them faster than they lose gloves, and I can't keep those in stock.  This winter someone always has a loose tooth, and one night they both had the same tooth that was very loose.  AJ was anxious that David would lose the tooth before AJ did.  I put them to bed and heard some shouts twenty minutes later that had me running to their room thinking they were fighting.  Turns out they were playing "dog" and using their teeth to play tug-of-war with a pillow and David's tooth popped out.  Lots of excitement, no one was sleeping and AJ started very determinedly wiggling his tooth to the point that it was bleeding.  I finally got them both tucked back in and then five minutes later heard shouts again.  This time AJ had convinced David to pull on the pillow while AJ bit it so that he could lose his tooth as well.
You might think all ends there.  But not in this household.  In the drama of rinsing mouths and teeth, AJ dropped his tooth in the toilet.  And then said--"Mom! Get it out!!"  I told him that if he wanted it back, he was going to have to fish it out himself.  His eyes got very wide as he thought about this, and I guess the tooth fairy loot outweighed the gross out factor because he plunged his hand right in and grabbed it. Once he had the tooth out he said to me "I can't believe you made me do that!"  I laughed and told him I didn't make him do anything.

And no, it was 9:00 at this point but it was not over yet.  AJ set the tooth on the counter to wash his hands and promptly managed to knock that same tooth into the sink where it slid down the drain with a tiny clink as it hit the metal rim.  AJ and David were both beside themselves.  Many tears later, dad came to the rescue and took apart the sink. Sure enough, he managed to find that darn tooth in the drain catch.

The end, you think?  Of course not. The boys decided they wanted to keep their teeth for a day and leave them for the tooth fairy the next day.  So we very carefully put them in a special spot on their dresser and they finally went to sleep at 10:00 on a Sunday, a school night no less.

The next night when we went to put the teeth under the pillows, we couldn't find them.  Upon inquiry, David admitted that he had sneaked out of bed the night before and taken both teeth into his bed to play with them (it must make sense to a six year-old) before he fell asleep. And then forgot all about them when he woke up.  We looked around their very clean room in horror.  The cleaning ladies had come that day, made the beds and vacuumed.  The boys were certain the teeth were gone, and AJ was mad at David for losing his tooth.  But we moved the beds, took the sheets apart and crawled around on the floor until we found one tooth on the rug.  Only one.  And the boys were able to identify it as David's.  Much tears and anger because David's had been found but not AJ's.  AJ felt David should give him the tooth as compensation for playing with and losing AJ's.  David was not willing to do that but offered AJ one of the three gold dollars he was anticipating from the fairy.  AJ was unwilling to compromise.  Drama, drama, drama.  No one was sleeping for the second night in a row.  I finally had the idea to go through the laundry basket where the dirty sheets were, and what do you know...we found that second wily tooth.  What a saga.