Archive for the ‘milestones’ Tag

Loose Tooth

My oldest boy, he’s tall and lanky. He outgrows most of his clothes in the blink of an eye. His soft-scented newborn days seem so distant, ancient, yet just like yesterday. He likes video games and playing with toy guns and he pretends he’s a soldier battling zombies. Even though I’ve been in denial, it’s safe to say that he’s not a baby anymore. To further cement that fact, he has his first loose tooth.

It was noticed during his bath last night. A very slight wiggle. The few times we discussed it wasn’t enough preparation apparently. “My baby teeth will fall out and then I’ll get big boy teeth!”, he’d say excitedly. When the time came, however, he had a mini-meltdown. He wouldn’t let us see it. He didn’t want to talk about it. He even cried. Big, fat rolling tears down his cheeks.

“He doesn’t want you to know he’s growing up”, J confided.

I remember feeling incredibly nervous bringing him home from the hospital. I didn’t know what to do with a baby. There’s a lot of things I regret about those first few months: I set him in his swing too often, I gave up breastfeeding too soon, my moods wouldn’t settle, my head was unsure, I doubted more than I believed. Through it all, he made me a mother. We fought through the trenches and came out hand in hand. And now my once fragile little boy, with a mess of curly hair and sea of blue eyes, is on the verge of a giant leap into growing up.

After he finally calmed down later that night, he urged optimistically, “Maybe it’ll fall out tomorrow!” It’s not going to be that soon, but it seems to be time I craft together some Tooth Fairy wings.

What is the going rate for a tooth these days?

Up!

Considering that we’ve been everywhere on the spectrum as far as developing speech is concerned, I now have no idea what’s normal and, frankly, I don’t care. What I do know is that Abby seems to be grasping the concept with glee. She mimics what we say and consistently uses an abundance of words, some of which sound the same but being her Mother, I am also her interpretor.

Along with a string of what I can only imagine are profanities when something doesn’t go her way, she can recite a list of around 20 words. I would list them all, but it grows every day and what I list now will most likely be outdated tomorrow. Plus, I’d probably just forget about some anyway, and end up editing this entry about a million times and never escape the computer and it’ll keep me up at night until I just delete the damn thing. Not that I’ve ever done that, or anything.

There’s one word that I could never forget to include, though, because it’s practically all I hear.

Up! Up! Up! Uuuuuup!

First thing in the morning: Up! Up! Up! Up! Uuuuuuup!

While eating dinner: Up! Up! Up! Up! Uuuuup!

ALL. DAY. LONG: UP! UP! UP! UP! UUUUUP!

She’s like a knee-biting, determined broken record. I swear I’ve even heard Up! Uuuuup! in my sleep. It’s just as endearing as it sounds.