If it looses out...

I'm going away this weekend with a friend. I need a break. It's been a really long summer with a lot of kids. Unfortunately, my break is coming at the very moment when Kailin's first loose tooth is on the verge of coming out.

It's not even the tooth we were sure would be her first (the wigglier of the wigglers at the dentist appointment) it's a come from behind victor in a tortoise and the hare scenario. Anyway, it's pretty darn loose. Not loose enough to hope that it will come out this afternoon before I leave, but surely loose enough that it might come out inside of the next 4 days while I am gone.

So I know I'm going to get no sympathy from working moms everywhere who miss a lot of the firsts and have had to come to terms with that, but as a stay at home mom who has never missed a first anything, this one is kind of big. Steve told me that we could wait til I get back to leave the tooth for the tooth fairy, but I wasn't sure how that would fly with Kailin.

When I told her today that I was going away for a few days and might miss her first tooth coming out and that I was kind of sad about that, that darling daughter of mine said "How 'bout if it looses out before you come home, we could wait til you get back before the tooth fairy comes?" I told her that I liked that plan just fine. She also told me that she wants to put it in a bag under her pillow so that no blood will get on her bed.

I told her that if she loses it she can call me to tell me about it right away and that I'd like that very much and she said, "You mean if it's loose I can call you and tell you?" I told her that it was already loose and she should call if it fell out. She said, "Yeah, if it looses out then we'll call?" Oh I love that girl....

Following my gut...

I couldn't decide today whether or not to take the two 5 year olds, the 3.5 year old, and the almost 3 year old to Target to get the rest of Kailin's school supplies or not. On the one hand, we've been home-bound for the entire week and it would be nice to get out a bit and have a change of scenery. On the other hand, the kids haven't been very well behaved this week and mass chaos and mutiny at home is a far cry from mass chaos and mutiny on the road! Sometimes, though, a change of scenery is just the trick to solve the problem. Something in me pushed to get out, so off we went. I felt a pull to the Target further from our home. It has better clearance sales and is a little larger than the slightly closer Target in Grafton. I followed my gut and headed north.

While browsing in the children's clothing section I heard "Sarah?" and turned around to see an Asian woman I didn't particularly recognize with joyful recognition on her face. As she got closer (and after she'd said her name to be entirely honest) I realized it was the friend I've known the longest in my whole life - we've known each other from infancy and I'd regrettably lost track of her for about the last 15 years. We grew up about 60 miles from here, so the fact that we both live in this area is incredibly unlikely. We had a great chat for about 10 minutes and agreed to try to get together next week (REALLY...we promised!) and catch up some more. I felt like no time had passed and was just as comfortable chatting with her as I'd ever been - she loves me warts and all and always has. I'm so glad I listened to myself today and that I've just begun rekindling a wonderful friendship as a result. Beck and I seem to come into each other's lives at just the right time and I am so blessed to have a true friend in her.

Corn off the cob

Kailin's wiggly tooth is starting to hurt a bit. I've been snapping pictures of her "tiny teeth" left and right because I love them so much. A part of me is definitely hoping that she loses at least one before picture time because then we'll have her holey smile captured forever - by next year she'll have some big teeth in even if she's missing others. We'll see what happens...

Tonight we had corn on the cob for dinner and to Kailin's dismay, it hurt her wiggly tooth too much to eat it. I cut it all off the cob for her and she was interested at how it looked on her plate. It goes without saying that she ate it all up and asked for seconds, but I just wanted to remember the night the corn came of the cob.

I *heart* Moon Sand

No, I don't. Perhaps *heart* would be more appropriately replaced with any (or many) of the following: dislike, detest, loathe, hate, abhor, and/or despise. Moon Sand was clearly invented by someone who is not a parent and may possibly have been invented by someone who hates parents or by someone with a sick sense of humor who sees parents as fools who desire children or by someone who is a grandparent and wants to see current generation parents suffer for real or supposed misdeeds toward their own parents or by someone who is just plain mean. I am SURE that Moon Sand was not invented by a mom.

Kailin asked for Moon Sand for her birthday and being the cool mom that I am I passed along the request to several relatives and friends. (You KNOW who you are and if you know about Moon Sand and didn't question my judgement in having requested it as a gift, then you will PAY dearly!) Kailin got Moon Sand. LOTS of Moon Sand. I got a lesson in carefully researching birthday requests before passing them along.

I brought the Moon Sand out today since it's been in the upper 80's/lower 90's and HUMID (read 80% or better most days) all week. We went outside one day and wilted after only half an hour. So we've been cooped up and the kids were getting ornery and I thought that a new diversion might be just the thing. Little did I know....

In fairness, it DID occupy the kids for over 2 hours. However, it is literally the biggest mess I've ever cleaned up (that didn't involve bodily fluids). The Moon Sand is exactly like sand until you compress it at which point it becomes somewhat dough-like until you mash it a little too hard at which point it re-dissolves into sand again. Sounds like fun, right? Every child's dream, right? Indeed, it is - and every mother's nightmare!! I gave the kids baking dishes to contain the sand in and STILL it ended up everywhere! ....Mashed into their hands and feet all over the floor and table, the chairs, their clothes....everything! It did sweep up rather nicely, I must admit, but it was still a mess. A giant mess. A mess which henceforth we will be conducting OUTSIDE!

At least eventually it will all dry up and I can throw it out... oh right, it NEVER DRIES OUT!

the tooth fairy

The tooth fairy has not yet visited our house, but today at the dentist Kailin's hygienist told her that she has a few "wigglers" on the bottom and sure enough, there are some wiggly little teeth in there! Kailin's pretty excited about having the tooth fairy come (whereas her dear friend Andrew is NOT - he is HORRIFIED that the tooth fairy doesn't give the teeth back!). I was talking to her about what she was expecting to find under her pillow after the tooth fairy comes and this is what she told me...

"No, mom... FIRST she comes in. THEN she cleans all the blood off of the tooth. And THEN she can make it into something - you know, like a toy or a money."

All these years and I thought the tooth fairy just had a giant collection of used teeth somewhere. It's far more practical that she's been turning them into toys and money all this time! Gosh I love my daughter!

Choo choo! Here comes the sugar train!

The day after the five hour tour, we took the kids and went to a Lumberjack camp/Steam train attraction about 40 minutes northeast of our cottage. Colby is huge into trains and we knew it would be a hit with him. We got to ride in the caboose (and in the top of the caboose at that!) and he was THRILLED! When we had to get off, however, he was NOT thrilled. NOT. We got past it and had a great time - we took a little pontoon ride down the Rat River, got to pet a slew of baby farm animals and then got to ride the train back to the station. It was a fun day and another memory from my childhood that I got to share with my kids. Fun times! What was NOT fun was that it took the kids 2.5 hours to fall asleep that evening after having been run ragged all day and having had only 6.5 hours of sleep the previous night.

The next morning we had a bit of a slow start to things and then decided to head on out and try some geocaching. The kids were not into listening and we were planning on searching on a somewhat busy atv/hiking trail that turned out to be located adjacent to a busy highway. Although we did manage a car picnic for lunch, it was clear that we were not going to have a safe situation with the busy roads and the not listening and the kids just weren't into it. We packed it in and decided to try the fantastic (and LARGE) candy store in nearby Lakewood for a shift in activity. Do I need to even bother saying that the kids were VERY into that activity? Ha ha. They loved it. We had some ice cream, the kids played a game of giant checkers with Steve, we bought a few treats, and we spent nearly an hour and a half wandering around looking at the offerings and deciding that the candy store in Lakewood will be a family tradition when we visit. It was a great lesson in choosing to shift to an activity the kids ARE into rather than trying to force the one we want to share with them with the result of everyone being stressed and in a bad mood. Yes, the kids ended up "rewarded" for their bad attitudes, but as I pointed out to Steve - they had no idea we were even considering the candy store and we hadn't promised it for good behavior, nor had we threatened to take it away for bad behavior. So all we did was change the plan. Besides, once they were good and sugared up we had a great time for a good long while. It's all about perspective!

FIVE hour tour

I know that the font is tiny and the formatting is funky. I typed this blog entry while we had no internet access and tried unsuccessfully 47 times to copy and paste it here. So I saved it as a jpg and now I'm done fooling with it.