A Visit From The Tooth Fairy

 I remember loosing my baby teeth.  Showing off a really wiggly tooth for several days then poking my tongue through the curiously empty spot between my teeth after it fell out. For my little girl it didn't happen this way at all.

Our dentist noticed her "loose" tooth well over a year ago - but it never really wiggled, it just barely moved if you intentionally pushed it, hard, with your fingernail.  After 12 months of barely moving the "big girl tooth" (Yikes, is she really old enough to possess anything officially called "permanent?") grew in behind her baby tooth several weeks ago. We called the dentist and were assured that as long as the baby tooth wiggled, even just a little, it should come out on it's own. Well the first week went by, then the second, and then the third. The tooth would wiggle, but still just barely, and it seemed to be getting less "wiggle-able" so I braced myself for a visit to the dentist and wrote "call pedi-dentist" on my to-do list. Well, thanks to my incurable procrastination I didn't call that day, or the next, or the day after that. 
On Wednesday I heard a quiet, "my tooth is loose . . . my tooth fell out" from upstairs during the kids' resting time. The story she told me is that she pulled her skirt out of her mouth (for some reason I never bothered to ask why the skirt was in her mouth in the first place) and it simply fell out - no fuss.
Well, as you can imagine, resting time was completely over. She danced around her room trying to figure out exactly what she should do with her new treasure. Ultimately she decided to wrap it in her favorite handkerchief (a hand-me-down from my grandmother - I'll try to remember to write about her adorable fascination with hankies another time) and put it in her jewelry box until Daddy got home. She insisted that it was a big secret, and we could not call Daddy - she wanted to tell him in person.
That night she happily tucked it under her pillow and received in exchange a silver dollar and a chocolate coin.

 
Now I am stuck with a new dilemma - what do normal people do with lost teeth? It seems like such a momentous occasion in her life that throwing it into the trash seems somehow disrespectful. On the other hand, I have enough clutter already and saving a box full of teeth is simply odd.  Any suggestions?

Oh, by the way - her big girl tooth is already slowly moving forward to take the place of the tooth that fell out. No visit to the dentist needed.