Summer Learnin'

The boys love these videos. I think we all know them by heart now. I do think it is helping a lot as they are now saying letter sounds all. the. time. Jason even goes so far as to create words with Jack's blocks and read them. (They are not, of course, all "real" words, but he's doing pretty dang good.) Shawn keeps "reading" (and poking-ouch!) the letters on my t-shirts. :-)

"F" plus "at" is "fat!"

It is so fun to watch them learn. Each has his own way of working on a skill, and each has his own strengths and weaknesses. Interestingly, they both tend to specialize in different areas, too.

This twin/brothers/boys thing is fascinating!

New Book

Jack got a new picture book filled with animals. Is it only me, or does he seem a bit overwhelmed?

Are you kidding me, woman?
You say I have to learn the names of all of these animals?
That's crazy talk!

Sunday Six

Six moments to remember from the week:

1. It was brought to my attention that I sort of left you hanging on the whole lost tooth celebration. The tooth fairy wrote a note to Jason and left him a dollar coin. He woke up at 6:30. We heard him suck in his breath and exclaim, "She came!" It was too cute. He opened up his box, found his coin, and made a beeline to our room to show us what he got. He ended with the sweetest, "I love her!" I think he's sold on the tooth fairy.
2. Jack is a little whirlwind around this place and ALWAYS on the move. I am just not used to the energy this boy has. He is so very different from the big boys at this age. That is a very good thing.
3. The boys continue to show me at every opportunity how different they are. It always makes me smile. Take pizza making for instance. Shawn likes his pizzas with sauce, cheese, peperoni, and black olives. Jason prefers his pizza sans sauce and with only cheese and cut up hot dog. LOL.
4. Shawn is our early riser and is most usually up and about by 7. Thankfully, he is happy to go play in the living room for a while so we I can sleep in for a bit longer. Now that I've been out for summer break, the second Isaac leaves Shawn comes into my room and wants to get into bed and watch NICK Jr. snuggle with me. The boy is smart. How can I refuse a snuggle no matter how early it is?
5. Jack totally loves balls. I think we have a future ball player in the family! He loves to throw them around the house and then chase them all over.
6. The big boys are now pretty adamant about choosing their clothes lately. They could have cared less about what they wore before. It never fails that Shawn wants to wear short sleeve shirts while Jason always wants long sleeves.

Cute Big Boy Saturday - Spit

Today, while the boys were playing outside, Jason got some dirt in his mouth. He asked for some water to rinse out his mouth. That innocent question led to this...

teaching the boys to spit.

Clearly, all young men (women too for that matter, but we don't have any around here except for me) should become masters of this very useful skill. Sure it isn't always seen as good manners, but it happens every day for a number of very valid reasons as evidenced by Jason's request. Besides, it has been a staple of comedies for centuries, and you know how the boys are all over comedy.

Anywho, Isaac got to work showing the boys the proper form of spitting out water.

He has their rapt attention her.
They are loving this.

Shawn, the eldest, is up first.
He dissolves into a fit of giggles.

His second try:
He swallowed the water and then spit out a dribble of spit.
He hasn't quite reached mastery yet.

Next is Jason's attempt.
He's blowing...but it just dribbles down his chin.

Shawn is going to take another stab at it.

Spit it out, Shawn!
Nope, more swallowing and laughter.

Daddy does a second tutorial.

It is quite hilarious to watch apparently.

We want to try it again!

Jason managed to get a tiny burst of water out!

Shawn couldn't ever stop laughing long enough to blow out
the spit. This was the best he managed to do. lol

It was actually pretty funny to watch them try. :-)

And Then It Was Lost

Well, two days after we found out it was loose (and a morning of complaining that it hurt), the tooth came out today.

The other tooth is already ready to move in...
I feel cheated out of a toothless smile!

I had told him to keep wiggling it, which he had been doing with his tongue. When quiet time was over, he came to tell me it was bothering him. It was barely hanging on, so I made the decision to tackle him so I could get it over with pull it out. No bleeding. No tears. No problems what so ever. Whew.

Then we had some fun. We started by creating a Tooth Fairy Box to hold his tooth. He let his creative juices flow and went all out. I am so proud of his finished product--it is all him, too!

Creating his Tooth Fairy Box

Carefully selecting his colors

In the end, he painted it red with other colors for highlights

Then he added some snazzy doodads for decoration.
(He placed, I hot glued.)

*My plan is to let them create a new box for each tooth if they want. I think it will be fun to see a snapshot of their life as they lose each tooth. If I am really together, I might be able to keep track of the boxes to show them someday. If not, you know I took plenty of pictures.
:-)

Thanks to some online info that the tooth fairy has her own WEBSITE!, I decided to check it out with Jay. We read the Legend of the Tooth Fairy. Then we visited the Ask the Tooth Fairy page. And we ended with an email to the tooth fairy:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Thank you for coming to our house because my tooth fell out. I really like cars. That's why I think you should use my tooth to help build a gas station. I made a box for my tooth. I think you are going to like it. I am really excited to get a coin from you so I can go to the store.

Thank you,

Jason

Yes, he came up with his letter. I did have to pull him back from including all about Shawn and the goldfish in the letter, but these are pretty much his thoughts. My favorite part is that he wants her to use his tooth to build a gas station. (She uses teeth to make the things in Toothfairyland.) Priceless!

He LOVED it all.

He was so excited to get into bed and wait for her to come.

His box on the nightstand next to his bed

I told him that she couldn't come until he was asleep. He tried so hard to keep his eyes shut, but would periodically call out with, "Mommy! My eye came open!" or "Mommy, I keep trying to keep my eyes closed but they won't stay!"

It was so sweet!

And now, all we have to do is wait for the tooth fairy to make her appearance, and I think we can officially call celebrating this milestone successful.

~~~

I had a hard time coming up with how to even tell this story. I think I just have to say this is one of those days that my words are not enough to do justice to the experience. Sometimes very good memories are like that, though-- it's difficult to capture the true extent of what something means to a person with mere words.

I had the BEST time talking about the tooth fairy throughout the day. I hope we made some wonderful memories for the boys. I know we did for me. :-)

Loose

I generally consider Isaac and myself as pretty on top of things having to do with the boys. I don't think there is much that gets by between the two of us watching. So, imagine my surprise, after looking in his mouth twice a day, every day, Isaac called me over yesterday evening to look in Jason's mouth. I saw this:

So after our talk about what is going to happen, Jason's take was:
"The baby teeth will leave the parking lot so the big teeth can move
into the parking space?" Yep, my boy. That about sums it up!

I swear I just about fell over.

(Then I might have had an internal freak out over what those big teeth behind those baby teeth will likely mean. After which I may have just about snapped his head off while I desperately tried to see if there is anything I missed on the top. Thankfully, there isn't. Sigh. I was somewhat relieved to find that one of the teeth is slightly loose until I realized that the other isn't budging at all. I guess that would just be greedy?)

How the heck do two teeth grow in that much before I even know it...when I look in his mouth two times a day?!!?

I don't know.

Parenting fail right there. Lol.

We have an appointment with the dentist next week, just to make sure that he won't need and dental intervention in this situation. (Oh, please NO!)

In my defense, doctor Google says that most children loose their first teeth in the first grade--you know, when they are 6 or 7. The boy won't even be 5 for three plus more months, so I wasn't even considering there would be teeth issues at this point. That's something, right?


***I had to go back and check to see when he got his first teeth because I was told that in general, the earlier they get their teeth in, the earlier they will fall out. I wrote a post about it on 6/30/08. He was 8 months old. That's not all that early! (He was such a cutie in those days!)

Mostly Wordless Wednesday - Potter

What's that mark on the middle of your forehead, Potter?

Would that be a lightning bolt you have there?

Shawn after a run in with a stick.

Now all you need is a wand!

The boys have been compared to Harry Potter throughout the years, but I do think Shawn is taking things to a whole new level with this new scratch on his forehead! Lol