Exploding

Levi said at the end of last week that his face hurt.  I dismissed it as 'boy pain' and didn't really think about it.  Then an hour or so later he said;

I feel like my face is exploding from the inside"

I didn't stress much about it, as he has a flair for the dramatic but did give him some Motrin to help him out.  Then I really looked at him and realized that his face was changing shape.  Not as dramatically as he was saying but still, I noticed that the gap between his teeth is widening.  Where two teeth fell out, leaving a gap of just over 1 cm there was now a gap of 2.2 cms.  As his big teeth are coming down they are forcing his upper jaw to widen at an impressive speed.  His face really is exploding from the inside and that was a very apt description.  I think it must be like the pain when braces are put on for the first time and your teeth and jaw have to change rapidly.  Today I measured again and he is nearly at 2.4 cm (nearly an inch) so I can almost see his jaw growing.  He has a cute speech pattern at the moment, lisping his 's' sounds and dragging his 'th' sounds as his tongue refuses to do what it is supposed to without the teeth to guide it.  Luckily I think his jaw growth is slowing down and you can see both adult teeth coming down.  I will try to be more sympathetic as they do!

I am organizing the annual Easter Egg Hunt at our house again this year and the creek may not co operate.  It is still running over and as it rains on and off during the day, the creek level is fairly steady and so the name has been altered somewhat;

The Annual

‘Brave the Creek Crossing’

Easter Egg Hunt

Anyway it is a fun task to organize and it will be great if the weather will hold out long enough for the kids to have a little play!  I am getting about a dozen eggs per child.  We put them all out and then all the kids run out and search at once.  It is a bit like organized mayhem but really fun!  The kids search eggs by color and the color based on age.  The youngest kids search for any color.  Then over four year olds search for all but red (which are just laying on the grass for the babies).  It means that the parents can stay in some semblance of control, which will be hard this year as it has become bigger than Ben Hur!

Dipper and Dapper

Today we welcomed two new members of the family.  I hope they are robust and long lived.  Levi was ecstatic. 

When we came back from USA, I promised Levi that we would get a dog as soon as we were able.  He had grown up with Kazi, the first year and a bit of his life.  He wanted a dog since she died.  I figured that when we came here, I would buy a little house and we could get a dog and a cat.  Of course, once I bought into the farm, all ability to get a pet for him failed.  There is a dog here, but Pippy is old and frankly a bitch to any other dog.  Pippy is Jo's dog and when she spends too much time downstairs, Jo gets all depressed and "no one loves me"!  I spend time trying to send Pip back upstairs.  Even after Pip dies, we won't be able to get a dog, because it will always be Jo's.  I prefer dogs more trained (and trainable) than Jo as well, so I think that it wouldn't even be the same type of dog.

 

We can't get a cat because Jo is allergic and so that is out as long as we live here.  This leaves little to actually get that doesn't have more drawbacks than attributes.  So Levi and I talked about fish.  He was very excited and I figured that we could give it a shot and see how robust they were. 

The tank that I found has a great feature that it also runs a night light through it.  So it solves several things at once.  A nice little bubbly sound to sleep to and a muted blue light.  I took these photos with the iphone, so they aren't particularly good, but it shows him sleeping soundly behind the tank.  Of course Levi had to get up a few times to use the toilet before sleeping.  I hope that the bubbly water noise doesn't increase the chance he (or I) wet the bed!

The other big revelation that I have been having a fun chat on facebook about is that Levi got a couple of new teeth in the last week.  He assures me that he told me about it and I will say that I do remember something along that line.  He had been complaining about his mouth the last few weeks and I have been, well, ignoring it.  Finally last night I took a flashlight and actually 'looked' in his mouth.

I found this great website about Tooth Development.  It shows in animation how the teeth come in and when they come out.  These new teeth in Levi's mouth are huge!  They must be adult tetth and it amazes me that they fit in his mouth and it certainly makes me think that it really did actually hurt a lot for them to grow through.  We still have two more to go.  I will be a little more sympathetic for the next two at least.

Oh and I forgot, Levi named the fish Dipper and Dapper, which I think is quite good.  The snail got a name as well but was much less memorable and so I promptly forgot it.  I will have to check it again in the morning!

Why do we lose teeth?

Tonight Levi cried because he was losing teeth.  Now I thought he would be all excited and wriggle his teeth until they came out early.  No, he cried because he wanted to keep them all.  I had to explain that he didn't have any choice, and that regardless of if he did or didn't wriggle them, they were coming out.  I actually just think he was tired and he was trying to find something to help put him to sleep.  Poor little guy.  I let him read his book until he fell asleep. 

Natural disasters continue to plague this poor land.  Now with bushfires in Perth, all of the states have at least one major disaster to deal with.  

I think it is time for the weather to settle down a bit but I think we are 3 months off being out of the woods.  If nothing else it would be lovely for the humidity to drop below 80%