teeth

McKay has been on the verge of losing his two front teeth for some time now. In the last 2 days it seems that almost all of our conversation somehow get rerouted to the subject of the tooth fairy. This is very important business, clearly. This was the conversation tonight at dinner...

Gentry: "Where does the tooth fairy get the money that she leaves under your pillow?"

Me: "um, I'm not sure exactly"

McKay: "maybe she sells the teeth she collects to God for new babies to use"

Gentry: "When Tessa gets teeth we should look and see if they are our old teeth"

McKay: "yeah, we would have to look really careful. Like with a telescope."

Gentry: "no, a magnifying glass"

Me: "sounds like a plan"

Gentry: "Maybe the tooth fairy just gets her money from having lemonade sales"

McKay; "Can we have a lemonade sale?"

Me: "sure, but you can't use the earnings to buy old teeth from people. Deal?"

Both boys: "deal."



They make me smile.

a day off of school

Because McKay is sick (still so much guilt!!), he was home from school today. In some small way I wish that this Pneumonia thing would present itself in a more blatant way. He still has no symptoms beyond the cough and it's driving him crazy that I wont let him do the normal things that he loves so much. It's hard to keep a 6 year old that doesn't think he's sick resting all day. It's complicated further when you throw a healthy 4 year old into the mix.

For instance...we have tv rules in our house and the boys are used to them. Gentry is allowed to watch an hour of tv in the morning after McKay is at school and then they are each allowed an hour in the afternoon. Sometimes if I have something that I need to get done I'll extend it a little, but for the most part they don't watch that much tv. But I was trying my hardest to get McKay to rest all day so I was allowing more tv than usual. He enjoyed it for a little bit but then began to whine. He whined at me for the rest of day because I wouldn't let him ride his bike, jump on the trampoline, skateboard, scooter, walk the dog, sweep leaves (thank God the wing has died down!), or play hide and seek.

"Honey, you have Pneumonia". Like he cares.

Nevermind the fact that we played checkers, painted stain glass animals, read books, colored and played on the computer. By 2 pm he was going a little stir crazy. At one point he actual said "I wish I could just go to school".

I think it may have stemmed a little from the fact that the air quality hasn't been great the last few days because of the fires and we had already been spending less time outside this week (even recess has been indoors).

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that he basically feels pretty good...but I wont lie, I was silently wishing for the typical sick kid that wants to stay in bed and sleeps off whatever is ailing him!

Does that make me a bad person??

Bring on more guilt!

Character counts

He got a character award!

The only character award for the whole class, in fact.

For "doing the right thing" every day in every way in all six Pillars of Character.

I could not be more proud. Seriously. I want him to do well in school. If he's smart, that's wonderful. But in my opinion there is nothing more important than character. The fact that he struggled in the beginning makes it even sweeter, because it means he had to really try to turn it around. It had to matter to him.

It's a good day!!

(except that he'll get to pick where he wants to go to dinner tonight, and there's a huge likelyhood that we'll be at McDonalds. yuck.)

But who cares. He's got character!!

everyone's on two wheels

When McKay was in preschool in Albuquerque his class had a trike-a-thon to raise money for St Judes. He was 4 and a half. He had heard about 4 days prior to it that one of the kids in his class had learned to ride his bike without training wheels. He was green with envy. He begged us to take his training wheels off so he could learn to ride before the trike-a-thon. So we took them off. But we gently told him that sometimes it takes awhile to learn how to ride a bike.

We were at the park every afternoon for four days straight. Me hunched over holding onto his seat running along side of him and him trying very very hard to ride that bike, but not really getting the hang of it.

We ended up putting the training wheels back on for the fundraiser. Diego rode his bike without training wheels, and you could tell that McKay was bummed, but he handled it. And they raised money for St. Judes which was the point of the whole thing anyway.

He didn't give up trying after that. I can remember days when he would be begging me to take him to ride and I would groan silently to myself because as much as I wanted him to learn and I was proud of him for sticking with it, running alongside of him always left me with a backache and he would be frustrated and it didn't feel like it was ever going to happen. Plus Gentry was still little and always got bored.

But, a month or two later something seemed to click and he was riding his bike alone and the days of backaches and frustration were behind us. But I kept thinking we'd be going through the whole thing eventually with Gentry. I was just thankful that it was a few years away.

This all seems like it happened yesterday. Gentry was 2 at that time, he's four and a half now. Man, time flies. I really think that McKay started trying to ride his bike too soon and if we had waited awhile maybe it wouldn't have been so hard for him. But, who knows.

But someone had told me back then that if they could ride a two wheel scooter they should be able to ride a two wheel bike (same balance issues etc.) and vice versa. So the Christmas after he learned to ride his bike, we got him a razor scooter. He had no problem with it. By the time Gentry was 3 and a half, he could ride the Razor also.

But I was in no hurry to go through the bike thing again. And Gentry had NO interest in taking his training wheels off. At all. He said he wanted them on forever. I was ok with it. I figured we'd just have to special order training wheels to fit an adult bike but, hey that's fine. :)

Then last week we were getting ready to go to the park and I was sticking his bike in the back of the car when for some random reason I said "wanna try riding without your training wheels today?". And for some random reason he said "ok".

So I grabbed a wrench and off we went. When we got up to the park, I pulled the bike out of the back and took the training wheels off. I asked him to hold his bike for a minute while I put the wheels and the wrench back into the car.

A minute later, I close the hatch and look over to the sidewalk where he was standing and he's gone. Gone.

HE WAS RIDING HIS BIKE. Without training wheels. Without help. Just riding, like he'd been doing it all of his life. No backache, no endless hours of running next to him. None of it. He was just riding the bike.

He's so proud of himself. He tells everyone he sees, everywhere we go, that nobody in our house uses training wheels anymore. So cute.

And I can't help feeling like this may be the way things work in life for them. McKay has to try very hard for things, and usually they come easily for Gentry. Once McKay sets his mind on something he doesn't give up very easily. And Gentry just gets things a little quicker. But he doesn't seem to care as much. They're basically polar opposites (in so many ways). It's very interesting to me.

Now it's time to get ready for the award ceremony.

It's Friday again. Yay.

A good surpise.

McKay is basically a typical 6 year old boy (if such a thing exists). Sometimes at school he gets carried away and plays a little rough with the other boys. And he struggles a little with the "stay in your seat" rule. His teacher says he concentrates pretty well for the most part but occasionally he'll get into a mood where he will use every trick in the book to get up and wander (bathroom, sharpen his pencil, pick up something he dropped, clean his glasses etc.)And at the very beginning of the school year he seemed to be in trouble quite a bit.

I was hard on him those first few weeks, he lost a lot of priviliges at home and it was rough on him. Even though to be really honest I think he was just adjusting to school starting up again and maybe the summer hadn't worn off yet. Plus, he's at a new school this year and he wants to make friends so badly so I think sometimes he just got carried away.

So, on the one hand I understood his behavior and on the other hand I didn't want him to get into the habit of acting up at school. And I definitly didn't want him to get a reputation for being the "bad kid". So, like I said...I was hard on him those first few weeks.

And things started to get better. And better still. The bad reports got fewer and farther between. And then yesterday when I talked to his teacher after school she said that he's doing a lot better. That he has slip ups, like any kid, but that he's concious of his behavior and he's kind to his friends. And most importantly she said he's never disrespectful to her (which can be a problem at home sometimes). It made me proud.

Then today (and this is the point of this post!) he was standing in line to come out at the end of the day and Mrs. G handed him a note and said something to him and he nodded with a bit of a worried look on his face.

My heart sank.

He was staring at this quarter sheet of white paper, I'm sure just wishing that he was a better reader! And I stood there for those 3 minutes until the bell rang just praying that the news wouldn't be too bad.

He walked over and said "I was green today" (which is good). Then handed the note to me and said "My teacher said that this is really important."

I paused before I looked at it. And when I finally did this is what it said.

We will be having an award ceremony tomorrow at 11:45 am
. McKay is going to be recieving a special award.
Please join us in the auditorium and bring your camera!
SHHH! It's a surpise! And to be fair to the children that
are not going to be recieving an award, please do not bring
balloons or other treats.

WHAT?!? Oh my. Holy moly. Seriously?

ok, honestly you'd think that this note said "McKay will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow".

I have no idea what this reward will be. I don't even care. It can be the "Doesn't pick his nose much" award for all I care(which it wont be, cause...well....he picks his nose ALOT!) The thing is, the note wasn't bad. And that was my first assumption. And I feel badly about that. Like really really guilty. I saw him with a note from his teacher and I assumed it was going to say something bad.

I don't think I give him enough credit. I want to appologize to him for that. Except he doesn't know that I assumed the worst. And he doesn't know the note was good (he didn't ask what it said, surprisingly. He just kept saying "I was green").

I'm just so excited for him, because I know that when he sees us there tomorrow and he gets his named called for whatever the award is, he'll be on top of the world. He's going to be proud of himself. I want that for him.

Good behavior seems to perpetuate good behavior. He's on a role and I hope it continues.

I'm excited for tomorrow!