clean teeth and a sense of humor

with a toothpaste flavor called
"silly strawberry," what kid could
resist brushing his teeth?

i did not anticipate that a 19-month-old child could have such a sense of humor. the funniest thing in the world, apparently, is spitting after you brush your teeth. john leans over the sink, goes "pppppt" and laughs hysterically. i guess i am just glad he finds such joy in the simple things in life!

but i think there's a difference between laughing at funny antics - after all, he's been doing that since he was an infant - and making a joke.

last weekend, grammie (my mom) came to visit, and one of the highlights of the weekend was a trip to the zoo. the baton rouge zoo has a pretty great tiger exhibit that puts the cats just on the other side of a large window:

up close and personal with a big kitty

the first thing john said when we got to the tiger exhibit was "kitty," which i guess is pretty accurate if a bit of an understatement. a few minutes after that picture was taken, the tiger got up and stretched, much to john's delight. john put his hand up to the glass, and the tiger put his paw up on the other side!

john giggled and laughed, and then the tiger started rubbing his head against the glass by john's hand - really like a big kitty.

i excitedly asked john, "what do you think that tiger is thinking, baby?"

he looked up at me with glee and said, "nummy!"

and you know what? i bet that was *exactly* what the tiger was thinking - what a yummy little boy treat this family has brought me to snack on!

nummy indeed.

Comments

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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