Sunday, July 27, 2008

I can't think of a title

We had a pretty fabulous weekend. Things just kinda fell into place, I guess. I've mentioned before that Sweet Hubby was working a 4 day on/3 day off schedule, but that changed this week and now he's working 4 days on/4 days off. So that means that every few weeks, he'll have weekends off! So this week, he had W/Th/F/Sat off. The kids talked their grandparents into letting them spend the night--one night with each set of grandparents, so Sweet Hubby and I had two whole evenings to ourselves!! It was sooo nice and what I love about us is that whenever we don't have the kids, it's never awkward for us, we just fall right in to being "just us" with plenty to talk about and lots to do.

Yesterday, we threw some of our junk treasures into my cousin's garage sale (thanks bj!) and made fifty bucks out of it. For minimal work. The kids weren't there the night before when we started getting stuff together and tagging it. When Stephen saw a kid walking around with one of our old toys, he said, "Hey look Mom! That's just like the toy we have at home!" On one hand I felt bad for not telling him that it was ours from home, but on the other hand, I had to kind of giggle to myself when I responded, "It sure is!"

I had an interesting conversation with Stephen this morning. You know Stephen lost his first tooth last week. I've never said anything about the Tooth Fairy, but kids just kinda get indoctrinated with that kind of stuff, so he knew about it and was excited about leaving his tooth under his pillow (we ended up leaving on his night stand). If you've been reading my blog for long, you know how I feel about Santa. I feel the same way about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and all that. But in his excitement about his first tooth, I didn't want to ruin it for him. So I neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the Tooth Fairy when he lost his first tooth. When he would say, "The Tooth Fairy's gonna come!" I would say, "Okay!" And I played the part and left him some money. The next morning, the first thing he said was, "SHE IS REAL!!" I just smiled at him. And I never brought it up again.

Then this morning in the car on the way home from church, he sweetly asked, "Mama, did you take my tooth when I left it for the tooth fairy?" I felt a little cornered and stalled by asking him what he meant. And I did want to get to the bottom of his question and give him the information he was asking for. He asked again if I took his tooth and left the money instead of the Tooth Fairy. Then I asked him what he thought happened. He said, "I think you did it." I try to never actually take the fun and the whimsy out of those situations, so I said, "I think it's fun to pretend to be the tooth fairy." He asked if I wore a tu-tu when I did it. Then we giggled about the idea of me sneaking into his room wearing a tu-tu and plastic wings with a magic wand. It was great and I love that he can ask me questions without worry and that he knows he'll always get a straight answer from me.

I KNOW I've been talking a lot about Stephen the last few weeks and not much about the other boys, and I'm going to try to balance it out over the next several posts, but Stephen's just giving me so much to think and blog about. Here's another Stephen-ism:

Lately, any time he asks me a question, before I answer it for real I ask him what he thinks about it. Today, he asked, "Mom, do you have spit?" Yes. "Does Ryan have spit?" Yes. "Why did God give us spit?" What do you think? "What is spit made of?" What do you think? "I think it's made of bubble wrap and water." I laughed and asked why. He spit into his hand, showed me and said, "See? It looks like bubble wrap and water." And you know what, y'all? It does look like bubble wrap and water.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

that sounds like an all-around lovely weekend! and TWO evenings with just you & Hubby? I'm jealous! :)

Sheri Ann said...

Now that is a sweet, sweet story!

As the author of a picture book about a very big-attitude tooth fairy with high-tech gadgets, one of the questions I get from school kids when I do school visits is: "Is the tooth fairy real?"

One little girl went so far as to say, "Is the tooth fairy real? Please, please tell me pretty please with a cherry on top!"

Calling her up to stand with me in front of 300 kids ranging from Kindergarten to fourth grade, I looked at her and said, "Yes, the tooth fairy is real. But like all fairies, she simply disappears when YOU stop believing in her."

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I could never tell a kid otherwise -- because I still believe in the tooth fairy myself! ;-)

Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt
Author, You Think It's Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?
12,000 copies sold!
www.4kids.Bell-Rehwoldt.com