Milestone

Well, we hit a milestone over the weekend. I'm still trying to grapple with my feelings on this one. Julia lost her third tooth in three weeks on Friday. This is huge for her in that she hates losing teeth. In fact, her orthodontist is amazed at how long she can actually keep her loose teeth in her mouth. So we packaged it up, put it in tissue and a small zip lock bag and put it under her pillow. We did all of this for the tooth fairy, even though Julia found out a few months ago that the tooth fairy didn't exist. She stumbled upon a dish of teeth that I had stored in the back of my jewelry cupboard. A sad day for both of us. She cried. I cried.

But this isn't the milestone I'm referring to.

Even though the trauma of the tooth fairy not being real hit hard I still held on to a shred of hope that she would continue to believe in Santa Claus. I've been very careful this year about not mentioning it too much for fear of bringing attention to a subject I wasn't sure I wanted to talk about. We didn't write letters to Santa but instead created a "list". Ben was sure that Santa could see the list at anytime from anywhere so not sending letters was okay. I tried not to use the phrase "Santa is watching" as this was sure to get an eye roll from Julia (most everything does these days). And, I've held off on putting their presents under the tree that I already have wrapped so that it will be evident Christmas morning that Santa came. Because surely I couldn't keep that many presents hidden in this house without someone finding them.

But, it happened. I was tucking Julia in Friday night, tucking the tooth under her pillow for the "tooth fairy" which she now knows is me. She looks at me and says "Mom, I know Santa isn't real". There it was. The sentence I had been dreading ever since the revelation about the tooth fairy. I paused, inhaled and asked in a silly voice "What do you mean he's not real? I believe in him."

"Mom. You don't have to pretend."

"Jules, I'm not pretending. I believe."

She looked at me long and hard. Trying to hide the nervous smile that creeps onto her face when she's dealing with emotions.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Okay" she said with a wink. And that was that. The moment I'd been dreading was done. In 30 seconds it was over. Phew.

Here's what I learned, though. Even though she realizes that Santa isn't real, she also proved to me that she has the ability to pretend he is. And that maybe, just maybe, there is still a little, tiny part of her that does believe. Just like me.