"...I Could Bust..."

My son didn't JUST lose his first tooth today.

He lost his first TWO teeth today. And he didn't just "lose" them. He had to have them extracted, because our little shark boy already had the big teeth growing in behind the baby bottom incisors.

AND I dreaded the dentist appointment, so J said he'd do it. At nine, I stared at my phone. I chewed my bottom lip. I knew it was tooth time. At 9:20, I was in shock when I got the call: All done! No problem! Piece of cake! Wham, bam. (My brave boy! My amazing dentist!)

We just put him to bed with his teeth in the special box under his pillow, and we got on video his eager expectation of "coins!" Peaches, of course, has many questions about this fairy business, vacillating between joy that fairies will be in her house and fear that they will come in her room.

My boy. Five years old. Missing two teeth. Wrote his name for the first time. Sounding out a few short words ("snow" and "bust"). Dancing with the girls at camp; "Mommy, I am going to introduce you. This is Amy and Amir! And this is Amir and this is AMY!"

My boy. Crying when he sees his old school, melting down today picking up his sister, sobbing when he asked, "Where is MY cubby? This is not my stuff in my cubby! I miss my school!"

My boy. Language regression, less than zero attention span for ABA. Scripting, perseverating. Put on time out, stamping away, declaring, "I leave with my DIGNITY!" Telling me he speaks Chinese, German, Spanish.

My boy. Wow. This all seems very sudden. How did all these ENDLESS, ETERNAL days that CREPT by at a torturous crawl add up to feeling like anything happened suddenly?

And yet. My boy. He's big. So big.

So proud of you, Rooster.