Keeping the dream alive

Zeke has had a wiggly front tooth for at least a month.  It got aggressively wigglier this past week, and because he knows it totally grosses me out, he's made a point of constantly showing me how it's just hanging by a thread.  LOOK MAMA NO REALLY LOOK DOES THIS FREAK YOU OUT IT DOESN'T WELL HOW ABOUT THIS NO REALLY LOOK!!

See?  See, Mama?  NO REALLY, LOOK!

For fuck's sake. 

A number of friends made suggestions along the lines of dental-floss-and-a-doorknob, which is seriously disgusting.  And thankfully, not necessary.  The tooth came out at school yesterday, all on its own (or at least, unassisted by me, which is the important thing).  They even gave him a cute little tooth-shaped box to bring it home in.

I was all set to play tooth fairy, which Zeke still believes in.  He decided that he wanted to sleep on the floor of my bedroom in a sleeping bag.  I was a little nervous, because I feared that if he just put it on the floor, it would get shoved around during the night and thus be difficult to locate and remove without waking him.  Then he said he was going to put it in his Stuffie (a big stuffed hippo that has numerous zip pockets).  I encouraged this, as it would make the tooth location/money provision process much simpler.

But then when I checked at around 4:30 in the morning, the tooth wasn't in the hippo.  Knowing that if I started trying to rummage around under the sleeping bag (with him in it), he'd wake up, I just shoved a dollar in the hippo's mouth, zipped it up, and went back to bed.

When Zeke woke up, he asked, "did the tooth fairy come?"

He reached under the sleeping bag and found the little tooth box.  His head immediately dropped to his chest and his lower lip started trembling as if a cartoonist had been asked to draw a picture of "little boy, utterly dejected." 

"Hey!" I said, "why don't you check the Stuffie?  Maybe the tooth fairy put your money in there so it would be easier to find?"

He unzipped the hippo's mouth and found the dollar.  "Look, Mama!"

"See?"

Meanwhile, I took the little tooth box and opened it, letting the tooth slide into one hand.  With the other, I held out the box.  "Zeke, she did get your tooth!  The tooth box is empty!"

He smiled and said, "huh!  How about that?"

Someday, I'll have to tell him this story, if for no other reason that to instruct him on how to lie effectively to his own children.

Beachy thoughts, and the preparation for the real thing

While my East Coast peeps are freezing their booties off in the aftermath of Winter Storm Janus (when did we start naming storms that didn't have the potential to turn into hurricanes?), we've actually had a relatively mild January so far.  It snowed a few inches last night and is very cold today, but it's going to be 60F tomorrow, so it's hard to complain.  We've had some good ski days, and Zeke can now ski with us, so I've had a blast taking him up on the slopes.  He hoots and hollers and sings to himself and shakes his butt because he's so happy.

But I'm still thinking about the beach.

We are going to Nicaragua for the kids' spring break, and we finished making the final arrangements a couple of weeks ago (car rental, passport applications, that sort of thing).   We'll be in a house right on the beach, plus the house has a pool, so there will be swimming and sunning and surfing and sightseeing.  The little town we'll be in, San Juan del Sur, isn't too far from Lake Nicaragua, which is this ginormous lake that has sharks. Apparently the sharks are aggressive, so no one swims in the lake  (I won't be telling Zeke about this, because then I'll be fielding non-stop questions about whether the sharks will come into the pool or house*).

I seriously cannot wait (for the beach, not for questions about fresh-water sharks making it into the house).  It is so nice to have days that are unstructured, but which naturally fall into a lovely, gentle rhythm of leisurely meals and sitting on the beach and swimming and surfing and reading books and relaxing.

And J and I will be ready.  We have been doing P90X3 with a challenge group - we are only in week 3 and folks are already losing pounds and inches.  One challenger lost 8 pounds the first week, and reports that her clothes are loser and she's feeling leaner and firmer.  Others are reporting gains in strength and flexibility and energy.  As for me, I've been eating really well (doing "slow carb," which works for me better than anything else) and sticking to the workouts, and while I don't know what I weigh (our scale's batteries died and I never bothered to replace them), I've been taking measurements and I'm already down an inch in my waist and my pants are much looser than they were three weeks ago.

Plus, it's hard to argue with 30 minute workouts.  As with Focus T25 (the last program I did, which features 25 minute workouts), even when you really don't feel like working out, you think, "it's only 25 or 30 minutes, suck it up and start and it'll be over before you know it."  And they're actually fun, so once you get going, it's great (and then it's over).  If you want to hear more about the programs or the challenge group format (I've got new ones starting every month), let me know.  You won't be sorry.

Aaaanyway... the beach.  We go in late March for a week, and then April will be hectic between my brother Sam's wedding and a big conference at work, and then it's May and I've got another India reunion and then a legal conference in Florida and then it's the end of school and summer starts and we'll do some camping and hiking and then it's July and we go to the beach again for our annual family trip.

Beach trips are the best.  My kids have the best time -- they are so happy and they spend all day getting sun and exercise and playing until they collapse from happy exhaustion.  And the adults have the best time as well.  Just hanging out and having fun with no sense of urgency.  It's totally rejuvenating.

From last year's July beach trip to New Hampshire.  the end of a long, happy day.

In the dead of winter, it's so important to have breaks planned.  Particularly if those breaks are at the beach.



*Seriously, it never ends.  Last night the kids decided to sleep in their sleeping bags in the playroom/workout room, but only made it about 30 minutes before climbing into my bed because they heard noises and naturally, assumed it was dinosaurs.