Darwyn puts tailors out of business

Darwyn: I found a way to make my shorts fit.
Gus: Oh?
Darwyn: If they are too big you just keep adding pairs of underwear until they fit.
Gus:  (laughing) That's good.  How many pairs of underwear are you wearing under that pair of shorts?
Darwyn: (cheerfully) none!

Max loses his first teeth for fun and profit

Max has a pair of adult teeth coming in his lower jaw.  But instead of coming in directly under his baby teeth, they came in behind his baby teeth, giving him a shark-like second row of teeth.  The dentist warned us that this is bad news; those baby teeth need to come out ASAP so that the adult teeth can come in properly.  He (or was it she?) gave us three weeks to get those baby teeth out before they'd have to be pulled.

We diligently reminded Max many times each day to wiggle his two teeth to help get them out.  Each time he'd dutifully wiggle his teeth for a minute and then forget about it until the next time we reminded him.

After two weeks of getting nowhere I decided to conduct an experiment in economics.  I offered to pay Max $5 per tooth that he removes before the deadline.  After all, why should I be the only one to enjoy the surplus generated by not paying an expensive dentist to pull baby teeth?  Without the bribe, Max has no incentive to help me gain that surplus.

Max was fired up.  He stood to gain TEN WHOLE DOLLARS.  He wiggled those teeth with renewed ferocity... for a minute.  Then he forgot about it just like before.  We kept reminding him of how much money was on the line, but the tactic just wasn't working.

One night brushing teeth as the deadline approached, I noticed that one of his two offending baby teeth was very loose and ready to come out.  I half-jokingly implored him to just let me rip out the tooth then and there, expecting to be stonewalled.  But Max surprised me: "If I let you pull it now then I want both of the five dollars!"

My knee-jerk reaction was to refuse.  I'm boss around here, kid.  This is not a negotiation.  But I thought more about it while I brushed his teeth.  Time for a flip-flop, just to see what happens: "Okay, Max.  If you let me pull that tooth right now then I'll give you $10, and you can still earn $5 for the other one later."

Next thing I know, I'm now faced with the job of pulling a tooth from a willing six-year-old.  He stood there with his mouth open and his eyes shut tight, braced for impact.  I never thought it would get this far.  To be honest, I was getting cold feet.  What kind of six-year-old lets his dad pull a tooth for money?  When I was a kid there wasn't enough money in the world to convince me to let anyone pull out my teeth before they fell out on their own.

Anyway, the tooth came out quite easily.  Max was proud and fascinated by the new hole in his gums.  And boy oh boy was he happy with his $10.  But the story doesn't end yet.

The dentist's deadline approacheth.  So the very next night in the bathroom brushing teeth I said to Max, "Just let me pull that other one, too."  I thought for sure he'd refuse this time.  This second tooth was not as loose as the first; it would be harder to pull and might hurt a lot.

He didn't even bother to negotiate this time.  He was now an old hand at this tooth extraction thing.  It would be easy.

So once again I find myself tasked with pulling a tooth from a kid's mouth.  I think I was more nervous than he was.  What if it's harder to pull than I thought?  What if it really hurts?  Should I back out?

Never.  I'm not going to be upstaged by my six-year-old son.  So I pulled.  And pulled.  The tooth would not come.  It slid between my fingers and my nails were too short to get good purchase.  I grabbed a dry cloth for a better grip.  I pulled.  Again.  The tooth came out!

Max was solid as a rock the whole time.  Proud as a peach when it was done, and very happy with his additional $5.  I'm incredulous.  He is made of tougher stuff than I.

Hail damage up at the river

Looks like we'll need to re-do the kitchen roof.

Photo courtesy of Uncle Jeff.

Ada's new tricks

Baby Ada is growing quickly and is doted on by everyone in the house.  She says mama, dada and da dun (all done).  There has been some discussion about whether she also says "Hi!".  The rest of the time she babbles nonsense that no one can understand...but it sounds like we should be able to. She also waves goodbye, claps and dances.  Occasionally she will sign all done, but most of the time when you ask her if she is all done she just looks at the ceiling fan.  She crawls, climbs up on furniture and wrecks havoc around the house (although baby Darwyn still has her beat in that regard).   She is just starting to stand on her own unsupported, so she will probably walk in the next few months. She loves to play peekaboo and be tickled and she has also just started playing chase.  She self feeds and tries to feed others as well.  She finally got two teeth at ten and a half months.  She continues to be very sunny and easy going.  Anyway, enjoy a few cute videos I captured on my phone of her milestones (and a couple cute photos thrown in for good measure).

Video of Ada first learning to crawl (sorry it is sideways):

Ada plays wears the baby:

Two videos of Ada with Cats.  Ada loves animals.  The second video is mediocre but includes nice audio of Ada babbling.

Baby Ada reads to herself

Learning frisbee early

Failed baby proofing

Ada loves babies.

Ada's cousin Tommy moves home.  More babies!

Ada "helps" empty the dishwasher

Happy Birthday Max (and the value of lying)

Max has turned six!  There was a time I truly believed that he would NEVER be six.  He had a great birthday party.  This year he wanted a pokemon party.  I know nothing about pokemon, so Jose helped plan things.  We played a couple pokemon games...had a pokemon cake and played the now obligatory chase dad around the yard game.  Chasing dad the super villain was so popular last year that it is now a staple party activity.  This year I had to participate (I did not have the excuse of being pregnant).  Dad and I were a pokemon team called team rocket.  We had a pokemon battle with the kids.  They had to tag us six times to win.  It was very popular.

Traditionally we have asked for no gifts at our kids birthday parties, but my kids have now caught on that other children get gifts at their birthdays, so this year things were different.  Max wanted presents.  I sat him down to talk to him about gift etiquette.

Me: If someone gives you a present Max, you need to say thank you and be grateful.

Max:  What if I don't like it?  

Me: Even if you don't like it.  You pretend to like it.

Max:  Isn't that lying?

I went on to try to explain the intricacies of lying.  How it mattered who you were lying to and why.  And that in this case, you were lying to prevent hurting someone.  

Me: Besides,  if you are grateful for the gift someone gives you, they are more likely to want to give you gifts in the future right?

The lesson really stuck.  Max definitely wanted more gifts in the future and "it will hurt others" is usually a very effective motivator for him.  He was careful to REALLY appreciate every gift at his party.  The kids sat around him in a circle.  With his first gift he received a beautiful homemade card.  To make the paper card shaped, it had been folded in half twice then illustrated on the front and in side.  But if you unfolded the paper the whole way one side was completely blank.  Max took out the card and unfolded it so he was staring at the blank side.  Then his whole face lit up in mock adoration.

Max : Oh wow!  I really love it!  

Later Darwyn offered Max a card.  She had gotten him a gift, but forgotten to make a card.  No problem, Darwyn is a big advocate of recycling.   A day or two earlier she had made a card for some new children she met in our neighbourhood named Oliver and Avery, but hadn't given it to them yet.  She grabbed this card and offered it to Max.  

Max: (slowing sounding out the words)  To O-l-i-v-e-r and A-v-e-r-y.......uh....Oh THANK YOU DAR!!!!  I really love it.  

Darwyn beamed.  Max may not be the best actor, but he is a sweet little boy and his acting was good enough for her.  

Max and his pokemon cake

"Oh wow!  I really love it!"

Genuine appreciation

And the obligatory happy birthday video:

The wrecked fort from Forest School

Greta took the kids tromping down the Laurel Creek trail this afternoon with other kids from another family as part of "forest school".  They took along some scrap lumber to make a fort or treehouse.  They found a great spot by the creek---a large, sideways growing tree.  They nailed a few pieces of plywood and two-by-fours into various parts of the tree to make a "cave", a fort, and a few other structures I never saw.

After dinner we returned to the site so the kids could show off their creation to daddy.  We arrived to see their construction completely destroyed only a few short hours after it was built.  Some pieces of lumber and duct-taped tree branches had been launched clear across the creek, the rest were strewn about on the ground.  Someone had littered a cigarette package along with numerous cigarette butts.

Naturally, the kids were upset.  Darwyn was melancholy but Max was especially hurt by the incident.  At first he seemed fine---perhaps he hadn't yet grasped the meaning of what he saw.  He burst into tears all of a sudden, saying, "If we rebuild it they'll just come back!"  It was another one of those moments in which a parent can see a piece of his child's innocence disappear.

Max's words haunt me.  What broke him was not the fact that his fort was wrecked, nor the fact that it was wrecked by some idiot vandal.  Rather, it was the realization that he was trapped.  There was nothing he could do to recover.  He could build it again, but the vandals will just wreck it again straight away.

His words resonated with me because I have the same tendency to obsess about every bad thing that ever happens to me at the hands of some malicious jerk.  I'm a law-abiding citizen, so I cannot take revenge.  Even if some crime had been committed, it would be hopelessly impractical to seek help from the authorities.  The only remaining conclusion is that I need to pick up sticks and move somewhere else where I hope no one will bother me.  This line of thought turns even the most trivial of bad experiences into a feeling that I'm being oppressed by pure evil.  Talk about first-world problems!!!

Maybe my tendency to blow bad experiences out of proportion is not so unusual.  But it sure was eerie to see Max jump straight to the same feeling of helplessness that I often feel.  If it looks like heritable behaviour and it smells like heritable behaviour...

After talking it over as a family, we decided the kids would write a note to the vandals.  The note will explain that this fort was built by Max and Darwyn and their friends, and that they were very sad to see it destroyed.  We'll laminate it and tack it to the tree.

It probably won't have any effect on anything, but at least we'll feel like we did something rather than nothing.  We'll all hope that one or two vandals will see the note and feel guilty, and maybe our efforts will hasten them toward the day when they finally snap out of their herd delinquency phase.

Tunnel to Tarabithia

For those of you who have not read "Bridge to Tarabithia" the story features a magical land that two friends visit everyday.  To get to Tarabithia you need to cross a "bridge" which consists of a log across a stream.  The story has a heart wrenching ending that I won't give away, but the lasting impression from the story is the impact of the magical land the kids visit.

Last summer we blogged about a tunnel under the road where we saw a baby bird and got eaten by leaches.  The road we went under actually intersects a second busy road and there is another tunnel under that road.  We had never gone under it before because it isn't comfortable for adults to walk through (it isn't full height), but the kids liked to creep under it part way.  

A couple of weeks ago the region saw a massive ice storm.  The next morning was cold and sunny and the world looked like it was made entirely of crystal.  We decided to take a walk in this new magical world and we told the kids we were going to take the "tunnel to Tarabithia".  We disappeared into the dark  tunnel and emerged on the other side into a crystal world.  We found little streams, gnome paths and fairy homes.  We also found an entire hidden lake we had never known was there before!  The kids loved it and have begged us to return to Tarabithia.  Gus and I have dreams that one day they will be able to go through the tunnel themselves and enjoy the forest whenever they wish.  But not until they know how to swim!

Darwyn fording a tiny stream on a log (note the tunnel behind her)

Tarabithia

Tarabithia take 2

Close up of the ice

More Tarabithia