SAD

06.29.2008 | 12:47 pm | Daily Life, Gray Matters

G, like most other boys his age, loves to build elaborate towers with his blocks. We let him keep them up for a while, but eventually he has to be told to take them down; if we didn’t make him take them down, he’d leave them up indefinitely and in doing so, he’d never get to make new towers.

Recently, this happened. He’d had a tower up in his room for a few days, and it was a clean-up day anyway, so I told him it was time to put his blocks away. I was met with the usual drama: horrified gasps, whining, and much complaining. Being the mean mama I am, I stood my ground and sent him to his room to perform this daunting, oppressive task. He did what he had to do, I went on about my own cleaning, and the day went on.

A couple of days later, he got his blocks out again and started building. I was sitting with him, just kind of looking at the blocks—most of them are my blocks from my childhood, so I like to look at them and remember all the fun things I used to do with them. On this day, one of the blocks in particular caught my eye. There was writing on it, and it wasn’t one of my own works from ages past. This was fresh writing, without years of wear:

I held it out to G. “G, did you write this?”

He looked over at the block. “Yes,” he answered.

“When did you do that? And why did you write ’sad’?”

“I wrote it when you made me put my blocks up yesterday. I wrote ’sad’ because I was sad because I didn’t want to put my blocks up.”

Can we say, DRAMA?  Haha…
I love that he wrote that, though. It is so much like the things I used to do as a kid, when I was feeling misunderstood and oppressed by the ‘rents. I’m glad he feels free to express it, and I hope as he grows, he continues to express his feelings in writing.

Comments (3)


I have discovered

06.27.2008 | 8:24 pm | Uncategorized

Google Reader.

This is just inexplicable awesomeness for a blog-obsessed girl like me. No more awkwardly navigating through my dozens of bookmarked blogs with my left hand, while nursing the baby. Now, I can awkwardly navigate the Google Reader list with my left hand, while nursing the baby. LOL! But really, that’s a huge help. The biggest plus is that it shows me which of my favorite blogs have new posts, and which ones don’t. This saves me from having to visit each one, over and over, checking for new posts! And, I get to read a lot more blogs this way. I actually had a few of them that I’d forgotten about, which are now in my Reader for me to catch up on. Many thanks to Angie, who enlightened me with her informative post for people like me who are sooo slow to catch on to all these fancy internet things!

Comments (4)


He did it again

06.24.2008 | 6:19 pm | Gray Matters

G went and lost another baby tooth!

(How’s that for modeling the new smile? He gets that from me. ;) )

It happened Friday morning. He’d just awakened for the day and on his way to the bathroom, he stopped and spit his tooth out into his hand. “Oh!” He said, rather matter-of-factly, “I just lost my tooth.” It had been loose for weeks, but over the previous couple of days it had been hanging by a thread, so it was quite expected. He said he felt something “crunchy” in his mouth when he got up out of bed, so he spit it out, and there was his tooth. What fun! (Sort of. I’m still on the fence about this.)

So we have a smile with a very large gap now, and two permanent teeth peeking up through his gums.  Both of those teeth are coming in diagonally.  Philip’s mom said that sometimes they will come in crooked but then straighten up once they’re in.  Let’s hope so, otherwise, we’re in for some years of awkwardness until it’s time for orthodontics.  Genetically, it’s a toss-up.  I have perfectly straight teeth—naturally—never had braces.  Philip had horrendously crooked, extreme buck-teeth until he got his braces when he was 11 or 12.  He never smiled with his mouth open.  Heck, he still doesn’t.  See how scarring it is?  LOL
Anyway…here’s G on his way to Sunday school, showing off his new smile. He is looking quite scrappy, which I think is the perfect look for a four year old boy.

Comments (5)


Little update

06.13.2008 | 2:05 pm | Daily Life, The Young'uns

The boys are fine. I thought I’d give a little update before I go into all the other stuff that’s been going on.

We have teeth appearing and disappearing all over the place lately!
G is growing up too fast. He lost his first baby tooth two weeks ago. WAY too early, in my opinion! I wasn’t expecting this to happen till at least age five, but he did it before he was four and a half.

Nice little gap, huh? The permanent tooth is now poking up a little bit…it is also very crooked! I was hoping he inherited my straight teeth and not Philip’s horrendously crooked ones, but it looks like orthodontist bills will probably be in our future. And the tooth next to it is very loose now; it’ll probably fall out in the next week or two. He’ll have a big ol’ gap then. Very cute, but I don’t like this one bit. I really, really am having a hard time with my baby hitting this milestone. It just came so fast. :( He didn’t even have that tooth for four years before it fell out.

In contrast, while G is losing his baby teeth, Des is getting his in! He’s had his two bottom teeth for a couple of months now, as you can see here:

Two bottom teeth is my favorite look for a baby! But things are changing because I discovered yesterday that he’s about to get his top two teeth. One has just broken through the gum, and the other is causing quite a bulge. There are even a couple of tiny blood-filled spots where the one is bulging. It looks so painful! He has complained a little bit, but not much. The little sucker bit me for the first time while he was nursing yesterday. OUCH. That’s what made me look to see if he had teeth coming in, and sure enough, he did. Hopefully that will be the last bite, because I was sore all day long after that incident.

Anyway, it’s hard to miss the irony of one child losing his baby teeth, while at the same time the other child is acquiring them. I probably think too much, but this has been causing me to wax sentimental during these past weeks. Bittersweet times. Half the time, I don’t even know what to feel, because I don’t like the baby stage and I want it over as soon as possible. But at the same time, I want to savor all the good parts. And as for G, I want him to just stop getting older from this point on!

Des started combat-style crawling about two weeks ago. He still won’t get up on all fours and crawl for real, but he’s gotten very adept at dragging himself everywhere with his tough little arms & elbows. I forgot how busy this new time is, what with him trying to get into everything and us having to teach him what “no” means. We’re not “baby-proofing” parents; we prefer to teach him right away what he can and can’t touch or play with. It worked really well with G; we never had to put anything away or lock anything up. Not a single thing. He just learned what was off-limits and eventually he stayed away from those things. It does take a lot of work on our part in the beginning, and a lot of (tiring) consistency. Old-fashioned, but effective. These are fun times. I must be weird because I really mean that—I love this stage (speaking of savoring the good parts, this is one of the best IMO!).

Not a whole lot else going on. We are still looking for land so we can start the house-building process. It’s hard when we’re so picky. We MUST have trees and we MUST have a half acre. But we can’t (or won’t) pay over a certain price. We must be near town, but we also have to be in a quiet, safe area. Around here, that’s an oxymoron. We’ve actually found a wonderful lot or two in a great area very near the bay. The only problem is that during Ivan in ‘04, the lots nearby did have water inundation from the bay, meaning that if we ever got another cat 3 or higher storm, flooding from storm surge would be a possibility. I don’t know if I can deal with that risk. I want to be able to hole up and stay in our home for any future storms, and I don’t think I’d feel safe doing that so close to the bay. But that land…oh, is it beautiful! It has Live Oaks, Magnolias, and tall Pines. All my favorite trees. And it’s a short walk to the bay. It would be perfect, if we never had another major hurricane. Ha!

Speaking of hurricanes, since I have a baby this summer, I am SURE this is going to be the year we get hit again. We were slammed in both ‘04 and ‘05, our first years with G. It was AWFUL going through major storms and long-term power outages with a baby! Scary, hot, miserable, and it really screwed up his sleep (which is a big issue in our house!). Then, the last two years were quiet—not that I’m complaining, but it at least would’ve been easier to deal with hurricanes with a preschooler than with a baby. But now that we’re in baby-land again this year…I’m more skeered than usual.

Guess I’ve rambled enough. Better go now so I can go to the store and get some food. Tomorrow is my birthday, and Sunday is Father’s Day. We have a lot of celebrating to do this weekend! Actually, we’re low-key with stuff like this and don’t have any plans, but we do make sure we eat lots of good food on special days. I think I’m getting a cheesecake. :)

Comments (3)


Ahhh…

06.11.2008 | 1:33 pm | Uncategorized

I’m back, and the blog is back.

We’ve just come out of a very stressful couple of months.

But all’s well now, at least regarding that situation.
Details forthcoming, email me or leave a comment in order to obtain the password, if you don’t already have it.  It might take a while for me to get it all written & posted; we’re working on finding a new home and we’re also dealing with a newly mobile 8-month old!  He’s about to be 9 months old.  And I’m about to be 35, come Saturday.  So it’ll be a few days…

Comments (3)