It's gone!

Yes, it's the tooth! Molly pulled it out this afternoon. She's soooooooooo excited! :) It's fun. Check out the roots on that baby. It's hard to photograh a single tiny tooth like that, but it has a lot of roots for a tiny incisor. When I was reading about permanent teeth coming in behind the baby teeth, I read that when that happens the roots may not dissolve well. I'm glad the tooth came out on it's own, and didn't need to get pulled!

New smile

Alex with his still slightly swollen lip and Molly with her new smile.

:)

More fun times

Molly went to a princess-themed birthday party yesterday. She was very excited to dress up as a princess.

Even princesses are silly.

Alex always loves to make us laugh. This morning, he came up to Cory to ask him a serious question, only he was wearing his sunglasses over his silly halloween glasses. You are funny and you know it, Alex!

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During the week, Molly talked a lot about her loose tooth. One day we were in the car when Molly started talking about how she couldn't wait to see what the Tooth Fairy leaves her for her tooth. I said I thought it would probably be a dollar. Molly was very excited, and said something like this:
M: I hope I get a dollar. That would be great. A dollar bill. Or maybe it will be a HUNDRED dollar bill. Because you know how much I like hundred dollar bills! (what?!?)
E: I actually don't know, Molly. What would you do with a hundred dollar bill?
M: I would buy toys. I would buy a lot of toys that would cost a hundred dollars. Maybe if there was a Barbie that was 100 cents I could buy 100 of them. One hundred Barbies!!!! That would be so awesome!!!!
E: Nice, Molly. I think you'll probably get one dollar. You'll have to wait and see, though. :)

Teeth

Molly has been excited to start loosing her baby teeth, but last fall her dentist said it would probably be a year based on her x-rays, so we've been trying to tell Molly to just be patient because it could be quite a while yet.
Then, last Sunday night, I was brushing Molly's teeth when I saw something white behind her front bottom teeth. At first I thought maybe she had hurt her gums or something, but once she spit out her toothpaste I could see what it was. It was her first permanent tooth! It was coming in right behind her baby teeth!
I showed Molly, and she was SO EXCITED. She was bouncing all around and just couldn't wait to tell everybody at school all about it. We checked her baby teeth, and the one right in front of this permanent tooth was loose. I told her to start wiggling it so it could come out soon so the big tooth has room to come in properly. Molly was so happy!
I felt kind of sad about the whole thing, though. :( My baby is getting so big!!! Losing teeth!
I told Molly I wanted to take some photos of her because these could be the last photos of her smiling with all of her baby teeth. Those photos are below:

Big grin to show all of her perfect teeth.

You can see the permanent tooth poking up behind her baby teeth in this photo above.

Here's a better look of that tooth coming up. I guess it's pretty common to have this happen.

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We also had a tooth incident with Alex this week.
On Wednesday night he gave us a scare. He started running up the stairs and tripped on the first or second step. I heard a huge smack and then him screaming and ran to him. He was bleeding badly, and it looked like he had bitten all the way through his lower lip. :(
I could see a huge gash on the inside of his lip, and on the outside just under his lip there was a horizontal cut.
I wrapped up some ice in a wet washcloth and had him hold it to his lips while I called the Children's Hospital ER to see if I should bring him there for stitches. They said yes, and Cory arrived home from work, and we all took Alex to the ER.
Once we got there, the bleeding had stopped enough that we could see the cut wasn't all the way through his lip. He bit on the inside and outside, but the outside cut wasn't very deep at all so no stitches were required. The inside cut is bad, but they don't do stiches on the inside of the mouth. Apparently it heals fine on its own and there is less risk of infection if they just leave it alone. The doctor there checked Alex out, put some Neosporin on his outer cut, and sent us home. Alex was a trooper through it all, and Molly was incredibly sweet to him, bringing him anything she could think of to help him feel better.
That first day he had trouble eating and pretty much lived on popsicles and smoothies. The swelling has gone down quite a bit, and he seems to be healing really quickly, thankfully. :)
Lea, a babysitter at the Y, told me that Alex seemed really brave and proud of his injury. She asked him what happened, and he just said, "I tripped on the stairs and fell and bit through my lip. It bled a lot, but the doctor made it better."

Fun at Gleason's Gym

Gleason's Gymnastics gym has a few preschool-through-kindergarten open playtimes during the week. Alex has gone there several times, but we didn't discover Gleason's until this past fall so Molly had never gone. She had Friday, March 6 off from school, though, so finally she was able to go play at Gleasons. She loved it!

There are a lot of obstacle courses to climb through/over and trampolines to jump on.

Molly and Alex loved everything. Here they are hanging on a beam.

They have a big pit with foam blocks that the kids can jump into and climb through. Alex does this over and over and over. Molly though it was fun, too.

"shirt hats" and interviews

Molly and Alex with their "shirt hats" on.

Molly's typical after school routine usually involves eating a snack, watching an episode of Cyberchase (her favorite TV show), and then taking her school clothes off and wearing only underwear until bedtime when she puts on pajamas. Yes, at 5 1/2 years old, she STILL prefers to wear as little clothing as possible (underwear are required in our house). Of course as soon as Molly starts removing clothing, Alex joins in on the fun and copies his sister. They do it even in the coldest weeks of winter. I'm wearing 3 layers inside the house and they are running around mostly without clothes.
One day, Molly and Alex randomly decided it was time to remove thier shirts, only they didn't pull them all the way off. Instead, they left the shirts dangling from their heads. They ran around yelling about how they were wearing "shirt hats". They were giggling and having a ton of fun together, so I had to take a photo of them in their "shirt hats". :)

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Interviews

One of the notes that has been spreading all over Facebook is an interview with your child. I interviewed Molly and Alex, but I thought it would be more fun to post their answers here rather than doing it on Facebook.

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I interviewed Alex, age 3 (my comments are in parenthesis)
February 27, 2009.

1. What is something mom always says to you? “I love you”
2. What makes mom happy? “I love you mom” (I am happy when he tells me that!)
3. What makes mom sad? “When I opened the graham cracker box.” (This morning he opened a new box of graham crackers after I told him we already had an open box and he could not open the new one. He opened the new one anyway and got a time out for it. I’m impressed he remembered!)
4. How does your mom make you laugh? “Wiggly worm” (It’s a tickling game – my fingers are wiggly worms coming to tickle him.)
5. What was your mom like as a child? “like Alex?” (somewhat!)
6. How old is your mom? "4?" (ha!)
7. How tall is your mom? “Big!”
8. What is her favorite thing to do? “Play the bunny game” (It’s a wii game he makes me play – Raving Rabbids)
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? “I don’t know”
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? (No answer – I don’t think he understands “famous” yet.)
11. What is your mom really good at? “playing with me” (I’m happy he thinks so!)
12. What is your mom not very good at? (No answer – I think he’s getting sick of these questions.)
13. What does your mom do for her job? “Takes care of Alex.”
14. What is your mom's favorite food? “salad”
15. What makes you proud of your mom? (No answer – I don’t think he understands “proud”.)
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? (No answer)
17. What do you and your mom do together? “play the bunny game” (Can you tell he asked me to play the bunny game with me right before I started asking him questions?)
18. How are you and your mom the same? “same coats” (We both have red coats.)
19. How are you and your mom different?
20. How do you know your mom loves you?
21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

(He had totally lost interest by question 19 and did not answer 19, 20, 21, or 22.)


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I interviewed Molly, age 5 (my comments are in parentheses)
March 1, 2009
1. What is something mom always says to you? “It’s time to get ready”
2. What makes mom happy? “When we do what you want us to do.”
3. What makes mom sad? “When we do NOT do what you want us to do.”
4. How does your mom make you laugh? “By doing funny stuff!”
5. What was your mom like as a child? “I don’t know that one.”
6. How old is your mom? “30”
7. How tall is your mom? “I don’t know”
8. What is her favorite thing to do? “Take care of me and Alex”
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? “Play with Alex”
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? “I don’t know.”
11. What is your mom really good at? “Taking care of us.”
12. What is your mom not very good at? “I don’t know.”
13. What does your mom do for her job? “Take care of me and Alex.”
14. What is your mom's favorite food? “Tacos”
15. What makes you proud of your mom? “I don’t know”
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? “Scooby Doo” (I don't think Molly has ever seen an episode of Scooby Doo in her life.)
17. What do you and your mom do together? “art projects”
18. How are you and your mom the same? “’cause we both have long hair”
19. How are you and your mom different? “I don’t have glasses and you do.”
20. How do you know your mom loves you? “You say it every time.”
21. What does your mom like most about your dad? “He loves you.”
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? “To the Y”

Molly's Asia Song

Molly's kindergarten class studied Asia and learned a song listing all of the countries in Asia. Here is a video of Molly singing:



Hmm. It's sideways... I can't get it to rotate without the sound getting all annoying. Did you notice the Africa song was a little big painful to listen to? My software makes it sound kind of piercing and "tinny" when I rotate the image and save it that way. Can anybody recommend a free video editing program that will let me rotate it without messing with the sound? Thanks! :)