Playing the Tooth Fairy

A couple months ago, Ray was eating an apple and walked up to me and said, "Mommy, you know what hurts?"

"No, what hurts?"

"My tooth." She then started wiggling it.

Ack! She's only 5 1/2! Isn't that early? Did the apple knock it loose??? I'm not ready for this yet! I thought I had more time! All of these thoughts ran through my head at the same time.

As the weeks passed by, the tooth slowly became more loose and Ray was having fun showing me every day how much more it moves. And, I spent more time freaking out about how to play Tooth Fairy.

I polled all my friends on Facebook, in real life and on Momslikeme.com. The response was varied. One Facebook friend said that the Tooth Fairy gave her daughter $20 for the first tooth.

$20?!? Really?

Another friend said she gave $10 for the first tooth and $5 for the rest. That still seemed high to me.

And another friend told me that you can't be a cheap Tooth Fairy, because the kids compare. I said, "Who cares?"

And, one wise friend told me to remember that whatever you start with, you are stuck with, so don't over-achieve!

Ray's Godmother bought her a sweet book about the Tooth Fairy (which can be found here) to help calm her fears and a Tooth Fairy doll to store her tooth overnight. Ray was so excited and felt like such the big girl. Her friend, Em, didn't lose her first tooth until she was 6 1/2. She was going to be the first one of the kids in her class to lose a tooth! Fears? Non-existent.

On Superbowl Sunday, that tooth fell out.

I didn't know what to expect when it happened. Tears? Shouts of joy?

She spit it out into her hand, placed it gently on the table, and said she needed a bandaid because her mouth was bleeding. No fanfare. No jubilation. Just stating a fact that her mouth was bleeding and she needed it to stop so she could finish lunch.

Go figure.

In the end, the Tooth Fairy brought Ray two quarters and a personal note telling her how proud her Tooth Fairy was of her for being such a brave little girl.

I was worried about being a cheap Tooth Fairy, but like I expected, it wasn't about the money. Ray woke up, excited to see what the Tooth Fairy brought her. Ray latched on first to the note. "Look, Mommy, she wrote me a note!" The money was secondary. She enjoyed hearing the quarters clink into her piggy bank, and that was about it.

I was proud of my girl, all around. For being brave. For being proud. For enjoying the basic things in life and putting more value on a handwritten note than the money.

I like being the Tooth Fairy.

The Bull Met Santa Claus at Hard Rock...

and he's been a believer ever since.


However, at the beginning of November, he was a non-believer. He swore up and down that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. He told Daddy he was a liar. He told Ray she was silly. He told me, well, nothing. But I heard everything else he said to the others.


And then we went to Universal Studios in Orlando for the weekend after Thanksgiving and had dinner at Hard Rock at City Walk. And HE was THERE.






SANTA.


Himself.


Oh. My. Goodness.




Chay was star struck. And has been a believer ever since.

I don't know this man's real name, but I send a huge Thank You to you for helping my little boy believe in Santa Claus!

What Am I Going to Do with Him?

Chay has become quite the handful now that he is three. Oh, don't believe me? Let the following serve as Exhibit A:

It was my turn to pick up the kids from daycare and I arrived around 5 pm. As I walked passed Chay's room on my way to get Ray, I glanced in the window and saw the teacher reading a book to the class with all the kids sitting quietly around her entranced. There were three boys and one girl, small because it was the end of the day.

I grabbed Ray and her stuff, which took maybe 5 minutes, if that. By the time I returned to Chay's class to get him, two of the little boys are standing on chairs in front of the closet and Chay was on his way to grab his own. The little girl was minding her own business playing with the books. The teacher was no where to be found. By the time the scene soaked in, Chay was up on the chair stretching as high as he could to lock the closet door.

Well, that's odd…so, I asked, "Hey, guys, where's your teacher?"

A knock from inside the closet was my answer.

I should have been horrified that they locked their teacher in the closet, but all I could do was laugh as she sheepishly looked at me when I let her out.

Oh, still don't believe me? How about this one:

Chay and Ray were in the guest bedroom watching a movie one Friday evening snacking on Cheerios. Chay came flying out of the room screaming and trying to blow his nose. I looked up his right nostril and it was red and I could see what looked like a Cheerio jammed up as far as he could get it. Great, but not the end of the world.

I assumed we could dissolve it so we basically water boarded him in an attempt to get it out. As his nose got redder and more swollen, it was harder to see whether the Cheerio was there so we made the assumption he had either inhaled it or it dissolved. He had stopped crying, but it was understandably still tender. He went back to watching the movie and I went back to Facebook.
We watched him over the weekend. He continued to have a tender nose and it sounded like he was still having trouble breathing. Finally, on Monday, I called his pediatrician and scheduled an appointment because clearly something was still wrong. She ended up sending us to an Ear, Nose and Throat doc. We went to that appointment and sure enough, that Cheerio was still up there. Of course, Chay wouldn't let him anywhere near his nose, so we had to schedule surgery so they could put him under. Surgery. For a Cheerio. Classic.

After the surgery, which took all of two minutes, the doctor came out with a funny grin. Turns out that Cheerio was actually a small brown bead that looks like a Cheerio. A $750 bead by the time it was all said and done with.

I'm saving that bead to give him as his 18th birthday present.

Some Battles Are Just Not Worth Fighting

While I was getting ready for the day the other morning, Chay came in waving a placemat at me. D'wha?

Chay: Not a pla'mat it a napkin!

Me: Uhm. Ok.

Chay: No, not OK!!!! It a napkin not a pla'mat!

Me: Baby, if you want to call the placemat a napkin, you go right ahead.

Chay: NOOOOOOO! It napkin not a pla'mat!

Me: Whatever, its a napkin.

Chay: Yeah. That's it.

A Lesson in Facials by Captain Mischievious

Our weekend was spent in Potty Training Boot Camp. It was pretty successful. Chay earned nine, count 'em nine, stickers for peeing on the potty. No poopies on the potty, but we can't expect too much on the first weekend of Boot Camp. (Sorry for the poopy talk. I promise it won't happen again.)

Chay shows off his new sticker

We didn't leave the house often, what with him wearing no pants and all. So Chay decided he was going to teach a lesson on facial expressions...

Mad Face

Happy Face

Power to the People Face

Just my plain ol' Mr. Mischievious Face

Oh, wondering what is all over his face? My eyeliner. His face is nothing compared to what my sheets look like.

She's Quotable.

Ray: "When I was a baby, I saw a rainbow dolphin riding on a rainbow at the beach. I knew she was a girl because she had a tattoo like a fairy on her back."

Uhmmm....... OK.

___________________________

Ray: "Look, its a chick with a pony tail!"

(Referring to a man with a pony tail. He looked at her a little funny.)

___________________________

Ray: "I don't flush the toilet because when I go in the middle of the night I want you to see it and know that I went and tell me 'hey, Ray, did you go potty in the middle of the night? Good job!"

Then later - E: "Ray, tell Mommy why you don't flush the toilet."

Ray: Mmmm...... I don't know.

E: See, I told you it was all crap...

Mickey Fanatic

Ray is on a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse kick. Its all she wants to watch - morning, noon, and night. She cried when E said that I might pick them up from school. You see, I don't have a DVD player in my car. Normally, its a good thing that I'm picking them up. But, no, I've been kicked to the curb for Mickey.

She came up with this game that only girls are allowed to play...

We vote on who has the prettiest clothes on. Winner gets to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Forever. She voted on herself and I voted on me. Funny thing happened. Somehow she won.

Guess who's watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?

Captain Mischievious

The Bull, as we tend to call him more often than not these days, is the King of Mischief.

See that look on his face? That is a classic Chay look meaning, "I'm going to do exactly what you told me not to do 'cuz I think its funny." This picture was taken shortly after we told him that the egg would crack if he dropped it from that height. He dropped it anyway, and guess what happened...the egg cracked and splashed egg coloring vinegar all over the place. Man, he cried after that one. First, he hates broken Easter eggs. And he hates the smell of vinegar all over him even more.

You can't leave The Bull alone anywhere near even potential writing materials...

Found using my mascara

And you certainly can't take your eye off of him when he's painting!

Was he trying to give himself a beard?

The Bull knows that I am deathly afraid of spiders. Today, he hid one of his toy spiders somewhere he knew I would find it in an attempt to scare me. I know this, because moments before I found the (very real looking) spider, he had that classic Chay look. While he was running away from me. Even knowing he was up to something, I screamed at the sight of a huge spider sitting by my computer. Grrrr.

He's a handful, yes. But how could you not love the little Bull?

The (Air)Bus

We recently flew to DC, and it was only the second time Chay has flown. The first time was to fly to the same place for his baptism/1st birthday party, and he doesn't remember that one. We flew JetBlue. The only way to go with kids - free cartoons right in the seats!

We bought him his own seat this time, even though he could have sat on my lap. It would have saved us $300 but it also would have made me crazy being forced to watch cartoons and deal with his wiggly butt on me for 2 1/2 hours. You know what is coming next, right? He sat on my lap the entire time and took a nap for half the trip. Both ways. On the positive side, I was able to watch Ellen while he slept.

While in the airport he was obsessed with the planes. "Its an erplain mommy, its an erplain!"

But when it was time to get on the plane? Not so much. "No, mommy, I don't want to get on the erplain. No erplains, mommy!"

So, being the great parents we are, we told him it was a bus. "Oh. OK, its a bus. Dat OK." Buses, OK. Check. Erplains, not so much.

It took him about a half hour into the flight (both ways, mind you) to realize that we really were on a plane. He would look out the window, see the clouds, and announce loudly enough for the entire plane load of passengers to hear, "Hey, mommy! We not on a bus! We on a erplain! You lied. Bad, mommy!"

He's brilliant, that one. And a tattle tale.

Chay's Joke

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Chay.

Chay who?

Chay wants to come in.

Flippin' brilliant.