The now infamous Tooth Fairy letter.

Holy crap.

That's about all I can say right now. Had I known what would happen when I posted a picture of a letter that the Tooth Fairy wrote to Emily at about 1:00 this morning, I might have thought twice. Or not.

The letter.

I thought that a few people would get a chuckle out of it, and that would be it. Now, here I sit less than 24 hours later....and there are almost 1900 likes on it on facebook and it has been shared almost the same number of times. More than 300 new people have come to my facebook page and have 'liked' that as well.

Really? It was just a silly letter to try to get my kid to clean her room.

I would say that well over 99% of the comments that I received and/or saw on other pages were positive - something that shocks me. It seems like even the most innocent share can trigger the haters and trolls to come out of the woodwork - so I got really nervous when I saw the numbers exploding after I posted it.

There were a few questions raised, and rather than attempt to answer them through comments on facebook, I figured I'd just address them all here. It's easy. And I might have a lazy streak in me at times.

The most common question related to the "bodies" in the bed. Yes, Emily is 11 years old, so no, there are no boys in her bed (unless one of her brothers sneaks in there during the night). The only other live body was that of her 13 year old sister, who insists on sleeping in the bottom bunk with Emily more often than not. And it irritates me to no end - whenever they sleep in the same bed, they end up fighting over the covers or who kicked who in the face or whose breath stinks the worst or whatever. So I hate when they sleep in the same bed. Plus, there were several inanimate bodies in the bed as well as a bunch of extra pillows and covers and all sorts of crap that made it next to impossible to find the tooth pillow under her pillow.

Tooth pillow. What's a tooth pillow? I saw that comment somewhere. If you look at this post you can see a picture of the tooth pillow. I got it when I was little, and the kids have all used it. It makes it much easier for the Tooth Fairy to find the tooth under the pillow in the bed if it's in this, and then the money gets stuck in the pocket so that it doesn't get lost either.

One comment that really kind of ticked me off annoyed me caught my eye was on one of the shares, where someone said something to the effect of me being a horrible mother, and my kid was going to be scarred for life. Uh huh. Whatever. I'm pretty sure that not getting her buck for her tooth until her room is clean is going to put her in therapy. Get over it.

There was another that wanted to know why she had to ask THE MOTHER and not THE FATHER. Too bad that was on a share too, so I couldn't comment and tell that person that there is no father in this house. I'm a single mom. I have The Dude, but he doesn't live here, and he's not their father. That one kind of bugged me too, but I just chalked it up to someone not being familiar with the story.

Probably the most common question was "did it work?"

Before

The answer to that is yes. And no.

Let me start off by saying that I do take responsibility for some of the mess in this room. We rearranged a month or two ago, and I had to take some of their shelves off of the wall in order to do it, and things kept distracting me and I didn't get the shelves put back up. And well, it's hard to put things away when the shelves aren't there. However, that has nothing to do with the dirty laundry all over the floor, or the garbage in general that was spread out all over the place.

They definitely started out strong. They got in there and they really started working. I got the shelves put back up (busted out some power tools to do it too...hehehe) and got some other shelves anchored to the wall and they got a lot of stuff put away. We had to stop to take Sarah to the school for open gym, and then we came back and worked some more, and then we had to stop again to take Emily to the school for basketball practice, so we kept getting distracted.

During

I thought that things were going really well in there, and it was starting to look really good, but then they dug into a huge tub (the green one in the 'before' picture) that was full of old artwork. It had been stored in cardboard boxes before, but the boxes got broken down over time and so we tossed everything into this tub. And they dug it all out and started going through it, so more of a mess was created. But, we got rid of a bunch of it, so that will help in the long run.

So yes, it worked to a point. The room is not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but they put in a good effort. So I may go ahead and allow the Tooth Fairy to come back tonight - especially since they'll be at their father's house for the next couple of nights. However, considering that it's after 11:00 and I can still hear them, I may cancel it again tonight.


Now....for something really funny. While Sarah was at open gym, I took the other 4 kids to the convenience store to get drinks. I left Emily and the boys in the van and went in to get what we needed, and then realized that I didn't ask her what she wanted. So I went back out to the van with drinks for me and the boys, and sent her into the store to get something for herself. She came out with a bottle of Jones soda.

If you're not familiar with Jones soda, they have little sayings under their caps. Keep in mind that we got these in the middle of the cleaning spree - and this is what Emily got:

(*Edited to add: In case you're wondering about how Emily has handled the hubbub around the letter, read this post - especially if you're one of the people who has something negative to say about it.)

(*Edited again regarding the hateful comments and judgment that I've received about this thing.)

(**Edited again to add: Emily has written her own post about this thing. If you'd like to read that - and you should - you need to click here.)