Rapunzel to the Rescue!

I’m going to be brutally honest: if I have to play Rapunzel with my adorable 3-year-old one more time I just might blow my brains out. 

Over and over and over again we play each day; by her rules, of course. The other day when I tried to deviate from the rules she actually “paused” me with her imaginary remote control, told me exactly how to play and what to say. Then she said, “OK, Mom? Now start at the beginning.” She then proceeded to “unpause” me. And don’t even get me started on the pieces. Tangled’s tower came with these itty bitty cups, saucers, a ladle and a frying pan which I considered to be pretty much worthless. Well, I guess the frying pan is important to the story—how else is she supposed to keep that conniving thief Flynn in line? But the other pieces? I didn’t think they served any purpose except to drive me nuts trying to keep them off the floor and out of the vacuum. Until Sunday, that is.

Brayden’s loose tooth would move until it was perpendicular to the other teeth in his mouth. He could wiggle it and wiggle it, but it still wouldn’t come out. So I decided to help him and pulled that tooth right out of his mouth.  Then I handed it to him. He was soooo excited! He ran right into the bathroom to check out his new smile in the mirror.

His dad, who was watching the NCAA basketball tournament on the couch, yelled, “Don’t drop it down the drain!” That sent me running to the bathroom. I placed a paper towel on the counter and told Brayden to put his tooth on it. He was still so excited that he more or less threw the tooth at the paper towel. It bounced once and—you guessed it!—went straight down the drain. Nothing but net! And so our own March Madness began.

Using our real remote control, I made Andy pause the game and come help me. He unscrewed the drain and we could see that the tooth was stuck in the gunk on the side of the pipe. Gross, I know. We scratched our heads and tried to figure out how we could get it out without knocking it further down. Most everything we could think of was too fat to even fit through the drain hole. Then Andy asked if there was something that we could attach to a wooden dowel to retrieve the tooth. I knew just the thing! So, using our mad MacGyver skills, we taped Rapunzel’s ladle to the dowel. 

It was the perfect size for the tooth! Mission accomplished! 

I sanitized the ladle, hung it back up in the Tower and everyone was happy. The tooth fairy came and left Brayden a treat and a quarter. Hooray!

The moral of the story is: don’t judge a book by its cover. Even something that seems small and insignificant can be a huge help given the right circumstances.