4 Year Old With Loose Teeth

Okay friends, I'm in a panic state and what better to do than blog about it. My husband just informed me that our 4 year old Little Man has two loose teeth. Did I mention he's FOUR and not the normal age of six? I'm a school teacher, elementary certified, they taught me how to deal with loose teeth in school...for first graders. Little Man's in pre-k.

My husband is all nonchalant about the whole thing, "well I thought it was a little early."

" Early? Yes it's early, maybe even abnormal," I think in my head because I'm trying not to share my overly negative or sarcastic comments too frequently.

My husband also states that he checked online and it was okay. Well of course online information could be wrong, so I call my mother...and look online myself...and call the dentist.

Conversation with mom goes something like this:
Me: "Noah has two loose teeth. Is that normal?"

"kind of early. I mean, I've never seen that." (my interpretation: abnormal)

This is the point at which I call the dentist trying to mask my panic.
Me: "I have a question (insert background info here). Me being the overbearing mother that I am needs to make sure I don't need to worry so could you have the Dr. call me back?"

Receptionist: "hold just a moment."

"Dr. said every child is different and he is just fine. It might take awhile for the new permanent teeth to come in or he may lose them all really quickly. She wanted me to stress not to worry."

Whew! Me back to my mom: "dentist said its okay. I still have a problem though. I'm not even done tracking Little Miss' milestones for year one and now I've got Little Man's elementary milestones to start."

Mom:"now you know why the second kid has half the pictures and a third one is out of the question"

All too true for my OCD self! I have to scrapbook! Goodbye!

Play Doh Fun

My daughter received a Play-Doh fun factory for Christmas and to be honest I was apprehensive.

See my Little Miss spent numerous days trying to and succeeding at eating play Doh for many, many, many months. However, she hadn't eaten any in a long time and she loves ripping things apart so it seemed the perfect gift to request for her. Today was the first day of squishing fun and I had...I mean she had a blast!

I remembered as we were playing with the fun factory that I had something similar as a child. It's the machine that squishes the play Doh out in long strings of different shapes. I remember my personal favorite being the setting with the little tiny strings and I would turn it into spaghetti or hair. It amazed me to watch my children playing with this toy that I remembered playing with as a child. My children had what seemed like the same conversations my brother and I had about what the play Doh was and to stop mixing the colors. It was a fabulous hour. Yeah for Play Doh!

It's a Yummy Halloween

I've done it! I have successfully made my first Halloween costume (that I'm actually proud of)! Follow me on my journey of success.

It all started with the costume for Little Miss. She will be a cupcake! In thinking about her costume and looking around I asked my Little Man if he would like to be a cheeseburger and he enthusiastically said yes. I thought to myself, "I could make a cheeseburger. It can't be that hard." I was only partially accurate.

I do not sew. I took home ec in middle school and when we went to buy a pattern for sewing my mom said, "let's buy this wrap around skirt...it's just one long piece of fabric. Nice and simple.". Sure simple if you have a concept of straight...which I don't. I got a minus (the equivalent of failing) in scissors when I was in kindergarten because I couldn't cut in a straight line. My skirt was only slightly shorter on one side than the other which is actually in style now...I was just being a fashion trend-setter! None-the-less I decided to go ahead and make a cheeseburger. I bought all of the material cut out my pieces and asked my mom if I could come over and use her sewing machine. With a weariness in her voice she said yes. I'm not sure if she was afraid she'd have to do it for me or I'd she was afraid I'd break her machine...again.

It actually turned out great and minus a few questions I asked my mom and a tiny bit of help from her when Little Miss was screaming I did it all by myself! Yeah! Check out the photos for a pictorial recap.

 Big Buns

 Cheese, Ketchup, and Lettuce

Stuffing the buns

 This is proof that I really did sew at least the lettuce.

The final product

Halloween Night-  Little Miss says, "Happy Ween!"

Chivalry

Every book I read or movie I watched as a young girl started off with "once upon a time," and ended with "and they lived happily ever after."  I dreamed of prince charming taking me off into the sunset on his white horse.  When I thought about my future I knew I would find a man who would open doors for me, cherish my every move, and treat me like a queen.

 As I began dating I found a person who opened my doors most of the time, sent me flowers on random days, went and got the car if it was raining, and walked on the side of the road closest to the traffic and offered to help me out of the car, or help me climb up a mountain.  I dated that man and I married that man and I'm proud to say that my husband still does most of these things, some of the time.

In doing some research for this blog post I came across a website that stated he would perform 5 acts of chivalry until he got married.  "Chivalry is only good for the chase.  Once you've caught them, it doesn't matter how you treat them."  I know this isn't the case with my why my husband has slacked off slightly since getting married and I think some of the reason is that I've proven to myself and my husband that I don't need him to do these things for me.  The expectation is that I'll just take care of myself because I shouldn't have to ask for help.  We all know that we live in the time of the independent woman and we all know that if forced, we could live by ourselves and take care of ourselves. I think though that the true act of chivalry is knowing that whether a woman can take care of herself or not, she really wants you to be her knight in shining armor.

Now that I have a son, I realize that it's more important now that I raise a man of chivalry.  I heard a story the other day of a man who literally laid down his coat over a puddle so his wife didn't have to walk through it.  As I listened to the story I thought not wow I wish my husband would do that for me but instead I thought how do I teach my son to be the man that will do that for his wife.

So for the past few days, I've been telling my son what he should do for other people and the realization that I've come to is that I have to model that and my husband has to model that.  We have to as parents make sure that no matter what is going on with our jobs, or how tired we are that we are constantly modeling the type of behavior we want our children to internalize.  If I want my son to learn that you open doors for women, then my husband has to model that.  If I want my children to talk when they get angry, then I need to model that.   If I want my children to have healthy marriages in their future, then I have to model that.  I cannot become lax even for one day.

I've become the kind of teacher that I can't stand when it comes to teaching my children.  I'm all talk and no hands-on, modeling, or investigating.  I have to change my approach because I want my son to be chivalrous.  I want my son to hold the doors open for women.  I want my son to understand that sometimes making someone happy is the best feeling in the world.  All of these things I have to model for my little man.  My little man will be a prize for some lucky lady in the far away future.  My Little Man will be some lady's prince charming.  I have to start now because unlearning a habit takes a long time and sometimes comes with a lot of anguish.  Chivalry will make a return to my household.

Las Exploradoras!

For those of you that don't know what that means, it's Spanish for explorers.  That is what the family and I did today.  It was a sandstone exploration adventure and those of you that are true Oklahomans know what that means.  For those of you that aren't, I'll provide a short description.  You hop in a truck or SUV with gloves, shovels, and water (it's hot here now) and set out driving away from civilization.  Once you find a dirt road, you turn on that and then turn on another dirt road, and then maybe one more dirt road.  From there you start exploring for sandstone.

Sandstone exploration is an in-depth and high-tech process that really requires multiple people.  One person has to drive while at least one other person is watching the gullies on the side of the road for sandstone.  Once the sandstone is spotted, the driver must slow almost to a creep so that the spotters can determine whether the sandstone is loose and can be picked up or if it is stuck in the ground.  Why look in the gullies you might ask?  The rushing water in the gullies sometimes causes the very brittle sandstone shelves to break off.  These broken pieces are just the ones you're looking for to create whatever sandstone landscaping you might want.

Today was the first time we took a child with us that could actually help.  It was a fabulous experience and The Little Man had a blast.  We found a few pieces early on that were extra brittle due to the extreme dry weather we've had recently.  Then we happened on a hub of sandstone rocks.  Mr. Man was loading them up when The Little Man decided he wanted to help.  As The Little Man ran around the truck to help his dad, I noticed some dense foliage by the hub and reminded The Little Man not to touch it because we don't know if he's allergic to poison ivy and while I have no idea what poison ivy looks like, I really don't want to have a miserable Little Man.  Mr. Man froze, slowly looked towards the foliage and regretfully announced that it was all poison ivy and he was pretty sure he had gotten into it.  Now, those of you that know Mr. Man know that he is extremely allergic to poison ivy...thus, I expect the steroid shot bill to come in about five days from now.

That ended the sandstone exploration.  It was a sad way to end it but did encounter another adventure of the awe inspiring kind on our way home, but, that's for another post.

Skinned Knees

So today started off as an absolutely wonderful day.  Mr. Perfect (my husband) got our beautiful, crying daughter out of her crib at super-early-thirty and put her back to sleep, then brought her into our bed where I was able to sleep next to her for another three-ish hours.  It was actually daylight when I woke up!  WOW!

After an amazing breakfast of Grand's Cinnamon Rolls also courtesy of Mr. Perfect, we began making a turkey which unfortunately turned out less than perfect...way less than perfect.

It was so warm today, again, that we decided to plant some bulbs in the back yard and yes I know they should be planted in the fall but hopefully it isn't THAT big of a deal.  As we were digging trenches to plant over a hundred bulbs, we hear a screech come from our son.  I turn to look and he's laying on the ground with his legs all sorts of contorted.  I was proud that I remained as calm as I did as I ran to his aid.  Upon my arrival, I assessed the immediate situation and realized that his knees were skinned.  Supermom to the rescue with with cold wash rags.

My boy is a tough kid 90% of the time.  Scrapes totally freak him out though.  So, I finally get him calmed down and he goes to stand up, his shorts are slightly too big thus slightly to long and the touching of the fabric to the scrape was almost paralyzing for my not-so-tough-with-scrapes boy.  So, I figure, if I show him that he can still move his knees even though they are scraped, we'll be good to go, he's logical.  Right, he's also three.  So, I decide to race him across the yard...he has my competitive nature so he gives it his all, no pain, just running.  I figure everything is just fine because he starts playing like it's no big deal but, after a little while the scrapes were just too much.  We had to go inside and play Mario Party on the Wii.  He was so distraught he wouldn't even eat pizza (his FAVORITE) for dinner...he just went to sleep.  Sad Day.