All I Want For Christmas Are My 4 Front Teeth...

Tooth number four for Sean... You can see that his first adult tooth is growing in nicely. You should hear his lisp! He's so adorable, even if I'm his mom. :) (Ashton's still at number two.)

Sean Lost Another Tooth!

So Sean comes into my office all excited last night at about 9:00 when he's supposed to be asleep in bed, and shows me his tooth that just wiggled free. This is his third lost tooth- now he's missing both his top front teeth, and one of his bottom front teeth. Tonight he had me peek at his second bottom front tooth, and sure enough, that one is loose too. Geez! He's going to have no teeth left to bite or chew with! We went to the dentist over Spring Break, and they both got x-rays taken, and talk about creepy pictures! Every single baby tooth in their mouths have an adult tooth right behind it, ready to take its place. They were like sharks. Ghastly.

Sean: Snaggle-puss. Slack-jawed Yokel. Jack-O-Lantern. My happy-smiley-faced-little-man. Love it!

Birthday Blog!

Yes, I had a Birthday this week (Tuesday the 12th- Abraham Lincoln's too! Next year will be his 200th birthday, BTW), and am now 29. For the FIRST time. :) My co-workers were super sweet and threw me a little party at the library, and since I gave up sweets for Lent, we decided it would be great fun to make smoothies instead. They were so good! Afterwards, we all decided that we should have a smoothie day once a month. Here's a picture:

And another one of the beautiful spread they made for me:


Yes, that is a cake that my supervisor made (wasn't that sweet?). It was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone but me. The flowers are still on my kitchen table, and beautiful!

Other note worthy news: Ashton lost his second tooth on Valentine's Day. After school. It's gone. He was really upset that he didn't have a tooth to put under his pillow for the tooth fairy. I told him we could make a fake tooth instead, but we haven't gotten to that, and Kevin's parent's picked up the boys for the three day weekend (driving to Berkeley tonight to visit my brother later tonight) so it'll be a little while until we get to that. If he and I remember. Sean still has a loose tooth, but he doesn't want to bug it, so it hasn't fallen out yet. But it's been like 2 weeks now! I always rocked my loose teeth back and forth with a vengeance until they came out. Anyway, back to Valentine's Day. I baked special cookies for their class parties: Ginger-honey almond cookies, recipe courtesy of Turi. Thanks dude, they were awesome! (Broke down and had one little one despite my Lenten promise. But I knew that was coming and planned on eating one anyway!) Here is a picture of them all in a bag, ready for the party!

Other news, I've finally been able to start running again! Very carefully, so I don't mess up my back. The only thing that's been holding me back are the side cramps I've been getting within the first mile or two. Anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent them? I'd be grateful if you'd share!

First Lost Tooth! And the Winner Is...

Ashton! His bottom front left tooth has been loose for a few days, and I have had the wonderfully fun task of trying to figure out what kinds of soft foods he could eat, and teaching him to tear/break his food into little pieces so he could chew with his back teeth. As usual, I sent the boys upstairs to brush their teeth after dinner, then came story and songs before bedtime. I was having them read to me tonight, and I checked on his tooth while he was talking, and it was missing! He hadn't even noticed it had fallen out! So I ran to the bathroom figuring that's where it would be, and luckily I found it in the sink- no sad drain death for Ashton's first lost tooth! Silly kid. :) So we tucked it neatly under his pillow with strict instructions not to touch it, because if he moved it, then the Tooth-fairy wouldn't be able to find it. He was pretty excited to be getting some money by morning... Of course when morning came, it brought tears because he couldn't find his money (a whole paper dollar! Whoo-hoo!) and because he thought the toothfairy was going to wake him up and he didn't get to see her! How precious is that? What a sweetie. :)



We had a pretty lazy day today- we learned how to play their new Scooby Doo game (pretty fun actually, and something they learned well enough to play without me later on, which is nice), and then we put together a big 48-piece dinosaur puzzle in the kitchen.



After which, we feasted on an old-fashioned brandy apple pie! Ta-sty! I was excited to use my new apple peeler/corer/slicer that I received as a Christmas present (thank you Turi!), and Sean and Ashton thought it was the greatest thing on the planet, how it peeled the entire skin off the apples in one big long piece. "Do another one, Mama, do another one!" Good thing I had a deep-dish for the pie...



Now that I think back on it, this has been one eventful week. It started out with a pile of snow that was almost higher than the retaining wall in the backyard, my snow leopard tattoo, a super emotional week, and now a first lost tooth. And school starts for me again on Monday. Storytelling this semester- should be fun! Just a couple more fun snowy pictures to end this blog. First, the snow. I admit, there was a bit of a drift, and the snow all seemed to accumulate in the back corner, but there was a lot to start with!



Then Sean "sledding" down the hill in the backyard to the ramp we built...



...and Ashton "tunneling" like a little worm through the snow. (You might have to click on this picture to really see him going for it head first.)