Caleb's Tooth

We thought that the teeth-losing thing wouldn't get started until after Caleb's sixth birthday, but I noticed about a week ago that one of Caleb's bottom front teeth was loose.  It just kept getting looser until we were sitting in church yesterday morning.  Caleb was quietly eating Kix from a baggie while the rest of us were singing when I felt a tap on my leg.  I looked down at Caleb's outstretched hand, and, sure enough, there he was holding his tooth!  No blood, no whining...I'd say it went perfectly.

We told him that he could put his tooth under his pillow and see what the tooth fairy brings him.  He looked up skeptically and said with narrowed eyes, "Come on.  The tooth fairy isn't real!"  I responded with, "Well, you are right about that, but what is under your pillow tomorrow morning will be real."  He was very happy with the five $1 bills he found.  Marcus and I agreed he scored big since we both remember getting coins for our teeth.  

When Ethan saw the big gap in Caleb's mouth and the tooth in his hand, his face broke out in a HUGE smile and he said, "Caleb!  It's like you're EIGHT!"  I guess losing teeth seems to be a purely eight-year-old experience in Ethan's eyes.

Campbell Christmas

Here are a few pics from our Christmas celebration with my parents here in Birmingham.  See the post on my mom's blog for more details and pictures.  I am swamped right now and it's all I can do to get the pictures up :)

Pictures

We got dressed up in our Christmasy garb for church yesterday and snapped some pictures on the deck afterwards.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Ambitious Big Brother

This post was also started a while ago, about two weeks I believe.  I do what I can :)

Caleb and Lydia were down in the playroom while I was preparing a meal in the kitchen.  I can see them from the kitchen, but my attention was mostly on what I was doing.  All of the sudden, Caleb rushes up the six steps from the playroom and says, "Mommy!  You have to see this!  Lydia just crawled across the room!"  I was very surprised because she had not been interested in crawling for the past couple of weeks, so I walked toward the play room with Caleb.  Sure enough, Lydia was 10-12 feet from where I had left her, still sitting and playing happily.  I was taken in for a second and rather amazed, but soon realized from something in Caleb's grin that all was not as it appeared.  

"Caleb, did you drag your sister across the room so it would look like she crawled?"

"No!  Of course not!  It was amazing!  She suddenly just crawled across the room!"

"Caleb."

"Oh, maybe I helped her a little bit."
"Caleb, tell me the truth."
"Okay, I did it.  I pulled her across the room.  Sorry for telling a lie, Mommy."

As evidenced from this story, Caleb gets even more excited about each of her milestones than we do, even to the point of rushing them a bit :)

Not The Best Way To Wake Up

I started this blog post about a month ago when this story happened, but am just now taking the time to finish writing it and post it.

The other day, Marcus was home in the early afternoon, and he let me sneak upstairs for a little catnap before dinner.  Lydia had been up a lot the night before, and I was exhausted so I fell right to sleep.  About 45 minutes later, I woke up in a panic, but had no idea why.  I rushed downstairs and saw nothing immediately alarming: Marcus was sitting at the computer, Lydia was playing on the floor behind him, the door from the play room to the garage was open...wait a minute!  Just as I was wondering why that door was open and where the boys were, Caleb rushes through that very door saying, "Daddy, Ethan is playing with a big knife in the garage and there is blood coming out of him!"  (So that's why I woke up in a panic!)

Marcus sprung out of the computer chair and we both rushed into the garage to find 3 1/2-year-old Ethan sitting on the garage floor, playing with a box cutter and bleeding from three fingers.  He looked up with a guilty smile and said, "It doesn't hurt.  It really doesn't hurt," in the same soothing tone that we usually use for him when he gets hurt.  He saw our panicked-changing-to-angry faces and made his own switch to a logical appeal: "But Daddy, you are a doctor and you can fix me!  Don't worry, you can just fix the bleeding!" And that is exactly what Daddy did: cleaned him up and sealed him up with Band-aids while I put the box cutter back in the tool box and put the toolbox on the highest shelf in the garage.  I think Daddy and I are in agreement now about the boys playing in the garage unsupervised :)