My "Quiet" Time

Today's motto: Sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Today was Toby's appointment with the oral surgeon to have his extra tooth pulled. BJ stayed home with Norah. The whole appointment took up an hour and a half, but it only took the dentist 5 minutes (maybe less) to pull out the tooth. Thank God for Scooby Doo on the portable DVD player! Toby did great! He put up with the laughing gas and Novocaine like a champ and then settled in to watch his movie. The dentist popped in, checked the numbness of his teeth and then took out the extra tooth. So quick!

Toby is thoroughly enjoying his day of recuperation. So far we've watched movies, drank yogurt, eaten blue, red, and green Jell-o, and built crazy Lego castles. Now, while I'm trying to do a few things on the computer, he's pretending to be a hair dresser and styling my hair. He just said to me, "These corks are to make your hair a little more stylish." He just pinned old wine corks in my hair. :o) (The reason the title is in quotes is because this is supposed to be his quiet time, and therefore my "quiet" time. Doesn't always happen, though.)

In an hour we drive BJ to Providence for a flight to Prague. My newest find out that way: a Chipotle! We don't have any quality Mexican food nearby (or anything that qualifies as Mexican), and I stumbled across a Chipotle last week while on an adventure with the kids to go to our nearest REI (also near the airport in Providence). While driving around to get to the REI I also discovered a Ted's Montana Grill and I found the elusive Trader Joe's (also the closest one to us in CT). This seems to be the norm around here: you drive around the same place hundreds of times and then you discover something that's been there all along.

I just got up to grab a drink and noticed a bird is in our enclosed porch. Gotta run before Toby decides to adopt it (or before our porch gets overrun by small animals).

My Forgetfulness

On Monday BJ and I were absorbed in a computer project during the kids' quiet time in the afternoon. I glanced at the clock and remembered something that I can't believe we forgot: Toby's first swim lesson was starting in 8 minutes! Oops. Toby had been asking daily about swim lessons, and we all got so lost in our projects that we forgot to leave! In our rush out the door we forgot the camera, so there aren't pictures for this week. We'll remember it for next week.

He and I high-tailed it over to the pool and made it for the last 1/2 hour of his swim lesson (thank goodness I knew where his swimsuit was!). There are 10 kids in the class for 2 teachers. They each have a flotation device buckled around the chest. They hang on the wall in the shallow end and take turns "swimming" to the teachers. This seems pretty simple, although I don't know how much Toby's going to learn about how to swim other than "try to not drown." After class I talked to the teachers who said Toby did a really good job and when I expressed concern about the size of the group they said two kids were moving to a different group. Eight seems like a slightly better number, but I had thought the class was capped at six. We'll try it for one more week and then reevaluate and see if there's a need for us to move to a class with a smaller enrollment.

My Photo Backlog and Stuff

It's already 3/4 of the way through April and I am just now updating the slide show. I think I've lost a week somewhere.

We've been keeping busy for much of the month. Toby has had a few dentist appointments and we've decided that he needs to have oral surgery next week to pull an extra tooth that's growing in. By pulling this tooth we're hoping to give his adult teeth room to come in straight, but there's a slight risk that he might lose his other front baby tooth (this was mentioned as an afterthought by the oral surgeon, so it's not something we are too worried about right now, although he said he couldn't know for sure until the surgery next week). We've talked to Toby about this surgery and he's looking forward to the part where he can pick a toy out of the treasure box at the dentist's office.

Hopefully the surgery will go smoothly for him (and us) because that afternoon we'll be taking BJ to the airport to fly to Prague (assuming planes are allowed to fly to Europe by then) for a conference. The next day we go back to the airport to pick up my mom for a 10 day visit! Hooray for Nana!

My Side-by-Side Photos

Here are two pictures of the kids, one from last April and one from Easter this year. Look at how much the kids have grown!

My Kids' Vocabularies

In the span of about 5 minutes today (within 20 minutes of waking up) Toby was heard saying: "Mom, I almost didn't see this [red] vitamin because it was camouflaged [on our red counter top]." and "Mom, what are these chemicals in my juice?" I have no idea where he's getting the idea about chemicals in his juice, but he learned the word camouflage in preschool. Gotta love it.

Norah, last night, said two of my favorite phrases, which she puts into heavy rotation when she wants us to stop what we're doing and give her attention: "Mommy, nuggle me." and "Hold you minute?" [meaning, snuggle with me and can you hold me?] These are timed so perfectly that I can't help but think that she's plotting to take over the world, one innocent phrase at a time.

Now it's time for me to head out on a jog (it's going to be 80 degrees today!!) and Norah uses another catchy phrase when I tell her she's coming with me: "No want to!"