#2

Oh yeah, this one was easy. Once dad checked his teeth at bedtime and told him that one could go, CT thought about it for about 2 seconds and then started chanting, “GET THE GEL, GET THE GEL!”

What’s the gel you ask? Well, I had been to the dentist the night Adam pulled CT’s first tooth and I happened to have a conversation with the dentist about the tooth and how scared CT was about it being pulled out. He gave me two packets of Novocain gel. That night, Adam put on the gel and no pain, no problem, out came the tooth.

Last night, CT wanted the gel and Adam forgot where he put the other packet. So with out skipping a beat, Adam picked up a trial size tube of Crest, told the kids we had bought a whole tube of the gel since we will have a lot of teeth to pull and then put it on his tooth. CT said he felt it working and so they began the pulling process. CT gives it a try first and then Adam yanks it right out.

This morning PJ and CT were talking about the tooth, the tooth fairy and the pulling of teeth at the breakfast table. In the midst of the conversation PJ looks right at CT and says, “Yeah, I tink dat just tootpaste dad put on yous toot.”

I didn’t say a word.

Fairy dust has landed

CT lost his tooth.

And yes, Adam pulled it.

With a little Novocain jell from the dentist, CT found his strength, tried to pull it himself and then dad got in there and popped that sucker right out.

No problem.

Did you pull?

CT’s lower left front tooth is just hanging on by a thread. The adult tooth is already up fairly high in back and keeps pushing the baby tooth to the right and forward. It actually looks like he has already lost a tooth because the gap has gotten so big (he can stick a straw through it) due to all the movement. But he doesn’t want it pulled. He seems happy to sit and wait.

Adam wants to pull it. He pulled all is own teeth as a kid, even if they weren’t too lose. He can’t stand to watch a good lose tooth just sit in that kid’s mouth, he wants it out. He has even gone so far as to say, “CT that tooth is so lose it’s going to fall out when you’re sleeping, you’re going to swallow it and then the tooth fairy won’t come because there’s no tooth.” I threw him a look and rolled my eyes when he said this. He responded, “What? It’s true, no tooth, no tooth fairy”.

Now I am a different story all together. I let mine just dangle. I wouldn’t let anyone touch them, any of them. They had to fall out on their own. If any one came near me with their fingers I would run for the hills shrieking. My neighbor friend Julie always got her teeth pulled by her parents. I even think they did the, tie a string around the tooth and slam the door trick. Of course they always wanted me to come over so they could tie mine up and slam the door. I would have none of that!

So, when I look at CT’s tooth it makes me cringe. I don’t even like wiggling it, which of course he wants us to do all the time, especially at the dinner table with food in his mouth and something caked into the gaping crevasse where half of his baby tooth was not so long ago. I can’t even stand watching Adam pretend he is going to pull it out, because I think he might actually just do it.

We will all just have to wait to find out…will CT crumble under the pressure of his dad’s itchy fingers? Or, will he wait it out? Stay tuned.

And he’s off

He was excited. I was excited. PJ said she would miss him and KP threw a cup at him and laughed. His backpack was packed, his items were marked and he was ready to start on his next adventure…KINDERGARTEN.

He stepped on that big empty bus with all the courage he could muster as old crabby Bill the bus drive welcomed him aboard and PJ and I waved him goodbye.

Three hours later, the bus returns and deposits CT at his stop. Out he comes smiling from ear to ear exclaiming that he LOVED IT and that his favorite part of the day was making new friends.

He told me about some of the work that they did at school and that he brought it home to put on the fridge. He pulled it out and showed me. On his first day of Kindergarten they worked on writing A’s, big and small. I looked at it, started to tear-up and thought to myself…what a great place to start!

15 Months, again

Not only am I a day late, but I thought you turned 15 months old last month. No, I am NOT kidding. That is really fucking sad, in a funny sort of way. I can not promise that I won’t forget another one of these “month” milestones, but I can promise that I will NEVER forget your birthday!

It may sound like you get forgotten or left behind as the third, but believe me, I am sure you are going to work-it for all it’s worth. After all, you are the baby.

Besides not yet being able to walk, throwing any and all vegetable matter that is put in front of you on the floor and taking on the hitting behavior of the other kids as your own…your sweet little curls, your beautiful hazel eyes, your chubby fat legs, your inquisitiveness, your stubbornness, your sorry looking tantrums, your fabulous smile, your funny little personality, your love for your siblings, your squealing and gibberish and everything else that makes you “you” is a little slice of heaven.

I love you my little big baby, no matter how old you are!

Mama

Time to shut the door

As I raced to get my swim suit on this morning before heading out the door to the pool, the kids standing in the door way of my closet watching, CT says, “Mom, I see your hairy vagina.”

In a millisecond, 10,000 things raced through my mind. How can I respond to this statement? What string of words would create the biggest bang for my buck as far as learning about growing-up, bodily changes, adults, kids, males, females?

And what great words of wisdom did I impart to my eldest son?

“Yup.”

No photoshop, I swear

Just a nice day

at arms length.

A mother’s intuition?

CT and PJ headed off to VBS for the entire week. What is VBS you ask? That would be, Vacation Bible School. Now, I’m no bible banger, but I do go to church (well…I go to church when the planets are all in alignment, there is Sunday school offered and I don’t have a child that is taking a 10:00 am nap). Honestly, I don’t even know what denomination the church is and I really don’t care, all I know is that they would take both my kids for 3 ½ hours and feed them a packed lunch. As long as there were no little red men with horns and pitch forks standing there at the sign in line, can anything really go that wrong?

ANYWAY, this morning CT told me he had a headache and stomach ache and that he didn’t want to go to Bible Camp. Please take 10 steps back with me…During the school year, Clyde had been complaining of headaches, usually on a daily basis. We had LONG discussions with the pediatrician and tried a variety of things related to food, allergies, eyes, etc. Now I never thought for a minute that school could have been the source of the headaches. He loved his school, his teachers and his classmates. Then, summer came. There are no longer complaints of headaches, until this morning, when he needed to head off to Bible Camp.

Bingo, a light in my head came on. It was school. He totally has an anxiety problem.

So, after excusing himself from the breakfast table due to almost throwing-up, he laid down. After about 10 minutes, he decided to come back to the table and try it again. We discussed his concerns and his fears and then he announced he was ready to go.

I piled everyone into the car and headed out. The closer we got the farther down CT slumped in his car seat. I decided to ignore this behavior. He started breathing heavy, then telling me he wanted to go back home and that he wasn’t going in and then making this gagging noise and saying he was going to throw-up. AT 7:30 am I was sympathetic, at 9:00 am I was annoyed, and get over it already…you’ll be fine, you’re just nervous!

I finally got him in, introduced him to the little boy that was sitting next to him and said, “CT this is Atticus, Atticus this is CT, you guys are in the yellow group together, have fun.” And off I went.

Three and a half hours later I picked them up. They had a great time. On the way home I asked CT how his head was, he told me that it still hurt but that it wasn’t because he was nervous, it was because he had so much fun.

I felt his head…I took his temperature…it was 101. Damn, I SOOOO thought I had that one pegged.

Oh that and a whole lot more

This past weekend, as custom in the morning, we (all five of us) were sitting in our bed watching the morning news enjoying our coffee and milks. The Revlon’s Age Defying Make-up commercial with Susan Sarandon and the other attractive red-headed actor, who of course I can’t remember her name, were sitting at their make-up tables, all gussied up, putting on foundation in the softest of lights and having the most splendid time doing it. CT turns to me and says, “Mom, do you wish you had that?”

I had so many answers for him; I just had to keep my mouth shut.

Sum, sum, summertime

You know its summer when Adam gets the shears out and gives CT his annual buzz cut.