Michael the Toothless Wonder

Michael became a toothless wonder today. That’s right, he can now sing the song “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”. We were eating dinner when his second top tooth fell out, the tooth that, to me, is the last vestige of babyhood. Gone, just like the baby that slipped into this world silent and observant, now replaced by a 47-inch boy who is no longer silent but still very observant.

I knew this day would come but didn’t realize how much I was dreading it. In addition to the whole my-boy-is-growing-up-and-away-from-me thing, there’s the adult teeth thing. When baby teeth come in they usually come in straight and nice and to me nothing beats a smile from a young child. When adult teeth come in it’s a different story. There are issues of overcrowding and teeth coming in crooked or not at all. Poor Michael has no idea what he’s in store for. Due to the fact that both sides of his family genes carry the bad teeth genome, he is a candidate for all three scenarios.

The Case Against Kindergarten

When I gave birth to my second son Nicholas in late October of 2005, my mom, an early childhood educator, warned me that my husband and I would have a tough choice to make when it was time for him to go to kindergarten. "In my profession we often recommend to parents of children with fall birthdays to wait a year before kindergarten so they have that extra time to mature and grow," she told me.

As I looked down at my newborn I couldn't imagine what he would be like in one year, much less 5 years. That seemed so far away and I said that we'd just have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

Well, now it's almost 5 years later and it is indeed time to cross that bridge. My mom was right: we have a big decision to make - to send Nicholas to kindergarten in the fall or wait a year and send him to a young five or pre-kindergarten program first.