Loosening Up

"Mom, my tooth hurts," Luke said to me yesterday. My first instinct was to give him the old "Sure honey, whatever" response, but then, remembering the tooth abscess debacle, I thought twice about it and decided to check it out. It was his front bottom tooth, which upon inspection was listing to the right. I touched it, wobbled it, and confirmed that it was... a loose tooth!!!!! Luke and I danced around the room with excitement. Then we went to Google Images to search for pictures of what the Tooth Fairy looks like. (Hey, this is the 21st century, what are you gonna do?). Of course I loved it when Luke thought about the prospect of a new tooth growing in and asked me, "When is my new tooth gonna hatch?" (Related follow-up question: "Mom, is the tooth fairy pretend like Cupid, or real like God?" Ummm....)

This afternoon Luke is off for his first day at beach camp. I'm sitting here silently fretting and hoping that he'll have a good enough time that he'll want to go back. It's kinda hot today, and he already had a long morning at school, and beach camp lasts for three and a half hours, and yadda yadda yadda mom-worry. As I walked him there this afternoon I was trying to explain what it would be like, but I must have overcompensated because he finally said, "Mom. Please. Stop. TALKING!"

Luckily he is with two little friends so he's not completely with a bunch of strangers. But still, I shed a little tear when I dropped him off. I've been sending him to the same school since he was two but this is different. It's really camp! With counselors! And big kids! ("Are there going to be bullies?" Luke wanted to know.)

Now here's the really weird thing: I'm at home while Zach is taking his nap, Luke is off at beach camp, and Dave is at work, and we're all within a seven-block radius of one another. Luke's beach camp is just a block from Dave's office. So when Dave walked back down to his office after lunch, he sneaked onto the sand to peek at the beach camp goings-on, snapped a little picture and reported back to me that Luke seems just fine.

Apropos of nothing, but it's just making me laugh: This morning Luke asked us, "Was anyone killed while they were building our house?" Um...No, not that we know of.

Late afternoon update: I picked Luke up and the first words out of his mouth were, "That was SUPER-FUN!!!" ... and later he added, "It was funner than fun!!!" Turns out he was a little scared to get in the water, so one of the guy counselors named "Brint" (Brent?) went in with him and soon had him cracking up and playing games in the water. Luke also came up with the name for his group (the Water Slides) that the campers voted as their favorite. So there you have it. Best possible first day of camp.

It's weird that I have so much to say about Luke when in fact I spent most of my time with Zach today. Suffice to say that he's become articulate in a very precise way. He'll spend a full minute trying to string together exactly the right sentence. "There's... a ... baby ... bird ... walking ... on ... the ... dirt ... on ... the ... ground." Often we'll be waiting in suspense for the last word. "I want a... a ... one ... I want a ... a one ... I want a ... a egg."

I always think it's funny that the boys (all kids?) get their b's and v's mixed up (Luke still calls our balcony the "valcony."). Zach is obsessed with "ruvver" bands because he thinks they can be turned into balloons. He'll hand me a rubber band and say, "Make a balloon." Then, after I've told him again and again, he'll walk around muttering, "Ruvver band doesn't make... a balloon."

At the moment I have this little landscaping redesign fantasy for our house, and it involves re-doing the front yard with drought-resistant native plants. I'm obsessed with the front lawn of some neighbors of ours who have perfectly tended white-gold beach grass that sways in every breeze. When I look at it, I think of Zach's hair when he's running somewhere or on the swing. His hair is nearly white, and it's super-fine, and it just kind of blows and swooshes in the air in whatever direction he's moving. I know if we had it in our front yard I would think of Zach and it would make me smile every time I saw it.